Reflective Encounters

“The centrepiece of I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face is an act of transgression, not only in what is taking place but in the way it is presented cinematically. Early in the film, Adam, the protagonist, stares directly at the camera, the fourth wall shattered in unconventional fashion, before turning away and robing himself in a niqab, the frame closing ever more tightly on the back of his now-covered head. It is a framing which creates an extreme sense of empathy for this hitherto taciturn character, and so too presents a palpable sense of anticipation about what he is about to perform, and its relation to the voicemail he is soberly listening to at the film’s opening.

It is also one of the few snatches of physical solitude he will enjoy in what is otherwise a Cairo of crowded buses and bustling corridors as he embarks on what will prove to be a fraught journey; the other, at the film’s climax comes as his only opportunity to exhibit the emotional heft he has otherwise to disguise from those around him. Closing to the sound of Suicide’s ‘Cheree’, its presence too carrying a sense of transgression, this is a film which eloquently pleads for emotional permissiveness in a social ordering which serves to forbid it. ”

— Jonathan Bygraves