When I was a third year medical student in Egypt, I heard about the leprosy colony they set during the days of the epidemic. The idea sounded extremely cruel, to keep one of your family members away just because they've contracted a disease. I guess it was an expected reaction to the fear of it spreading during times where infection control wasn't really a thing, especially in Egypt. Then I saw the trailer of the movie this year; I had to watch it! It was a beautiful, heart-aching experience. I have a thing for movies with fresh faces, and there's nothing better than a leper telling this story. His lovely soul shines through; it's almost amazing that this is his first time acting, so I like to believe it was mostly true, raw emotions. Obama, his young friend, is absolutely charming and talented. It was all aesthetically pleasing. However, there were parts that seemed a bit odd; like him not knowing he jumped on/was hiding in his donkey cart for a good few hours, how the boy lost consciousness with minimal trauma, how they found each other, and so on. I just appreciate a logical sequence of events, even if it's ''just a movie.'' Also, there's a trend of showing extremists in many Egyptian movies in a comedic setting (A trend for almost 30 years.. should be outdated by now). They all talk the same and act the same. It's honestly cliché, and not even funny. It takes away from the professionalism and message of the movie. Despite that, the overall experience was pleasant.
11 Reviews
Mix of Freaks and road movie
johnpierrepatrick24 March 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Yomeddine is mainly a road movie in rural Egypt, where we follow two main characters, a leper and an orphan.
First stage is however shot in the "Colony" where we can discover these 2, and, let's face it, get used to the leper physical appearance.
If that is indeed necessary, I almost stopped there, fearing a movie that just used it to recolt pity.
Fortunately, the road movie begins and is finally showing the tale of 2 people, lost and searching a light somewhere. One is just mourned his loss and want to find people related to him. The other is in search of his past. The road movie shows also a generally hidden Egypt with 2 main parts for its characters: one where they are the acting ones, and then one where they are the observer (from the time Beshay get its veiled hat). It is also a tale of solidarity, indidualism and fear, when faced to a singular person and the unknown he bears (is he healed from its leper?).
However the answer given (even if the reunion with its family is touching) is a bit disappointing: solidarity is found only with the ones bearing the same weight and final lesson is that they are happier among themselves (though I do get the irony of having already what you left and sought for).
Fortunately, the road movie begins and is finally showing the tale of 2 people, lost and searching a light somewhere. One is just mourned his loss and want to find people related to him. The other is in search of his past. The road movie shows also a generally hidden Egypt with 2 main parts for its characters: one where they are the acting ones, and then one where they are the observer (from the time Beshay get its veiled hat). It is also a tale of solidarity, indidualism and fear, when faced to a singular person and the unknown he bears (is he healed from its leper?).
However the answer given (even if the reunion with its family is touching) is a bit disappointing: solidarity is found only with the ones bearing the same weight and final lesson is that they are happier among themselves (though I do get the irony of having already what you left and sought for).
Yomeddine - An Arab Ode to the Freaks
hosamomran23 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Located in North Cairo, Abu Zaabal leper colony was the inspiration behind Abu Bakr Shawky's feature film. There, the director had shot his short documentary "The Colony" in 2009. The colony is home for 6000 people, who choose to stay, years after scientific proof that they are not contagious or of danger to the outside world..
The NYU graduate, Shawky, along with producer Dina Emam, put together a small team to create a fascinating road movie that tells the story of Beshay; a man who has recovered from leprosy but left with extensive scarring, living off scavenging for sellable items from the local garbage dump.
Following the sudden death of his wife, Bashay arrives at a midlife crisis and resolves to travel to his home village, which is hundreds of miles away - uncertain of the path and afraid of facing the family, who abandoned him as a child out of fear of his condition.
Centuries ago, and due to socially assumed contagiousness of the disease, lepers were ostracized and marginalized. They were subject to extreme measures of quarantine all over the world, and even now, that research has concluded 95% of people is immune to this disease, the people affected are often treated as outcasts, and therefore consider themselves to be.
Played by non-professional actor Rady Gamal, a natural in both his performance as well as appearance, as Shawky allows the contours of Gamal's face to be bathed in light without any prosthetics. Bashay's traveling companions are a monkey and Obama; a boy from the neighboring orphanage, played by Ahmed Abdelhafiz, another non-actor. He was given the name of Obama, in reference to the "guy on TV", as he later elaborates.
On the road, the two friends encounter an unsurprising amount of hostility from strangers, but eventually find companionship from a trio of outcasts, including a legless former truck driver and a dwarf. The new characters are introduced in light and often comedic dialogue, bringing to mind the movie "Freaks" (1940) by Tod Browning, which was played by a cast of real performers from the 40s' "Freak Shows". These performers fought unemployment through performance art and are remembered to our day for the movement they have started.
In a way, "Yomeddine" introduces the new heroes, this time Egyptian, forming deep friendships and continuing to work for a living regardless of their physical disability, limited options and the discrimination they're subject to.
"Yomeddine's value lies in its documentation of the outcast experience through close encounter with Egyptian slums shot by Argentinian cinematographer Federico Cesca: demonstrating raw portrayal of hardship without engaging in poverty porn, and music by Omar Fadel was successful in forming a memorable sound to the movie.
Winner of François Chalais Award at 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Tanit d'Argent at Carthage Film Festival, the Audience Award at El Gouna Film Festival and a nominee for numerous awards, "Yomeddine", which means Judgement Day in Arabic.
The NYU graduate, Shawky, along with producer Dina Emam, put together a small team to create a fascinating road movie that tells the story of Beshay; a man who has recovered from leprosy but left with extensive scarring, living off scavenging for sellable items from the local garbage dump.
Following the sudden death of his wife, Bashay arrives at a midlife crisis and resolves to travel to his home village, which is hundreds of miles away - uncertain of the path and afraid of facing the family, who abandoned him as a child out of fear of his condition.
Centuries ago, and due to socially assumed contagiousness of the disease, lepers were ostracized and marginalized. They were subject to extreme measures of quarantine all over the world, and even now, that research has concluded 95% of people is immune to this disease, the people affected are often treated as outcasts, and therefore consider themselves to be.
Played by non-professional actor Rady Gamal, a natural in both his performance as well as appearance, as Shawky allows the contours of Gamal's face to be bathed in light without any prosthetics. Bashay's traveling companions are a monkey and Obama; a boy from the neighboring orphanage, played by Ahmed Abdelhafiz, another non-actor. He was given the name of Obama, in reference to the "guy on TV", as he later elaborates.
On the road, the two friends encounter an unsurprising amount of hostility from strangers, but eventually find companionship from a trio of outcasts, including a legless former truck driver and a dwarf. The new characters are introduced in light and often comedic dialogue, bringing to mind the movie "Freaks" (1940) by Tod Browning, which was played by a cast of real performers from the 40s' "Freak Shows". These performers fought unemployment through performance art and are remembered to our day for the movement they have started.
In a way, "Yomeddine" introduces the new heroes, this time Egyptian, forming deep friendships and continuing to work for a living regardless of their physical disability, limited options and the discrimination they're subject to.
"Yomeddine's value lies in its documentation of the outcast experience through close encounter with Egyptian slums shot by Argentinian cinematographer Federico Cesca: demonstrating raw portrayal of hardship without engaging in poverty porn, and music by Omar Fadel was successful in forming a memorable sound to the movie.
Winner of François Chalais Award at 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Tanit d'Argent at Carthage Film Festival, the Audience Award at El Gouna Film Festival and a nominee for numerous awards, "Yomeddine", which means Judgement Day in Arabic.
Director of this movie will put egypt in oscar's
robaermaged12 January 2019
This movie is talking about real life story , people who really need help , not just money , but love , people need to know they exist , this movie is perfect , i cryed from start min to last min , i love it <3 really thanks for director
Utterly brilliant
omarkhalednour29 September 2018
Moved to tears
ejikeebube25 March 2020
I had to make a review about this movie, it really moved me, I have never cried over a movie before but this one moved me,especially when he kept yelling 'Am a human being ' ...there is something about those words that will make any man weep. some people are really going through a lot in life, this movie deserves an Oscar,just try and see the movie. You won't regret it.
Omigod
laduqesa3 October 2020
I'm actually at a loss for words. I have had this film on a hard drive for a couple of months and was waiting for the right moment to view. That came about earlier this evening.
I simultaneously wish I still had the experience to come and that I had seen it sooner. I was moved, buffeted, amused, upset, astounded in turns.
The film is a bit rough around the edges with the two stars who I assume had not done any or much acting before. And there were a couple of holes in the narrative. But that didn't matter during this wondrous odyssey through Upper Egypt.
It's a road movie, but with a real difference. Both the leads are seeking their origins and pasts. And it's not a comfy journey, it take place on a donkey cart, on foot, dodging the fares on the train, on the backs of vans and lorries.
During the trip there is hostility and meanness but it's more than outweighed by the kindness and solidarity of others, above all by the band of "freaks" as they call themselves who helped our heroes onto the final part of their journey.
I refuse to get into spoilers; the ending is perfect and cannot have been devised in any other way. What happened at the end had to happen - Beshey's father was, tragically, right.
The subtitles were in near perfect English and from my limited knowledge of Arabic were correct. There was one glitch in one sentence when two lines disappeared off the screen too swiftly for reading but that was the only timing issue.
Prepare to cry and laugh while watching.
I simultaneously wish I still had the experience to come and that I had seen it sooner. I was moved, buffeted, amused, upset, astounded in turns.
The film is a bit rough around the edges with the two stars who I assume had not done any or much acting before. And there were a couple of holes in the narrative. But that didn't matter during this wondrous odyssey through Upper Egypt.
It's a road movie, but with a real difference. Both the leads are seeking their origins and pasts. And it's not a comfy journey, it take place on a donkey cart, on foot, dodging the fares on the train, on the backs of vans and lorries.
During the trip there is hostility and meanness but it's more than outweighed by the kindness and solidarity of others, above all by the band of "freaks" as they call themselves who helped our heroes onto the final part of their journey.
I refuse to get into spoilers; the ending is perfect and cannot have been devised in any other way. What happened at the end had to happen - Beshey's father was, tragically, right.
The subtitles were in near perfect English and from my limited knowledge of Arabic were correct. There was one glitch in one sentence when two lines disappeared off the screen too swiftly for reading but that was the only timing issue.
Prepare to cry and laugh while watching.
Our Humanity
westsideschl12 October 2019
Yomeddine probably means Judgement Day. Leprosy (known as Hansen's Disease) is curable; not inheritable; not transmitted once cured; 95% of the population has a natural immunity. The scaring & deformities make it so that many members of the last colony in Egypt, where this movie was made, prefer the security & comfort that it provides rather than leaving.
The story, using non-actors, follows our scarred Beshay & an orphaned 10 year old kind neighbor (appropriately nicknamed Obama), as they travel across Egypt by donkey cart; walking; by train; hitchhiking to locate Beshay's family. One moral in the movie is that what's important is our humanity & not material things (something a U.S. political leader has yet to learn).
Challenges of reclaiming new cinematic land
mtawhid9626 September 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Movie «Day of Judgment 2018»
Challenges of reclaiming new cinematic land
In a place isolated from normal life, Beshay lives in the vicinity of the leprosy colony after I was one of its inhabitants during the days of the epidemic, working to inspect the garbage with his donkey. His wife dies after suffering mental illness for a while after being held in hospital. In the wake of the burial, the condolences surprise a car from Qena from which a lady asks him to bring her to the grave of his wife and
her daughter who apologizes to her that she did not visit her during this period until after she died .. A question arises in the head of «Bashai» after 30 years ,why did not his father come as he promised?
And decides to go to his family in Qena in southern Egypt, because he wanted to remember and know his presence, especially since he did not have a child because of the disease unlike the rest of the former inmates.
The first challenge: Radi Jamal (Bashay) is a human being and not a patient
The director and writer Abu Bakr Shawki insisted on presenting Radhi as the hero of a film, a humanitarian case that has its conflicts and drama that affects the viewer through it, not through the illusion of being ill, in fact it is no longer, it has a history of leprosy but it is healthy and healthy Is a danger, but just scars and distortions that can not be treated.
It is a very difficult challenge and I think that it succeeded amazingly. "Bashay" is a man who is looking for his origin and in this way he is facing difficulties. During the film I focus completely on its goal and the gap between it and the shocks of reality. There was no enthusiasm for emotions and a perverse sense of feeling like other local or international films.
The second challenge: to blame those who surround them with non-demonization
It is the most important challenge in my opinion, which gave the work a deeper dimension, it is easier to highlight the angelic heroism and its injustice through the brutality of the "natural" surrounding people who do not miss a position even hurt him because he is outcast.
This is not what happened, but the expression of human contradiction in a good image, doctors and officials in the colony treated him as a state of a group of papers, but their behavior is not without a sense, colleagues colonial children love him and teach him, but they laugh at him laugh and mock each other. The most important embodiment of this dual humanity was in the position of meeting the father at the end, which gave a real and cruel justification, instead of the consumption of scenes of rejection principle and then the happy end of romantic or permanent rejection and the tragic end of the absurd. This brilliant offer of the end removed the responsibility of one of them to show the struggle of the other, but established that the issue of the life issue of fateful choices is greater than right and wrong or idealism and demonization, and this served very essence of the value referred to in the title «Day of Judgment ».
That was confirmed when one of the audience has exploded near me to cry, where the truth of the work tells us.
The Third Challenge: Movie Classification
This work will open up a new cinematic space. It is the heroes and the history of the filmmaker who expect the work to be documentary. In the documentary, the real characters are with the dramatic additions to the story but they are not realistic, while the work of real people in a fictional fictional drama from the beginning. There is a comedy dimension to «Bashai» has appeared in the laughter of the public repeated, the work creative output of the work of fictional drama for all human beings with a basic hero with a satisfactory history, very difficult very I have not seen before, and the work exceeded the acceptable distance.
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The film produced beautiful references, the most important of which is the strong relationship between Bshay and the wars of the donkey and Obama (the orphan child) and his first-born children in the colony. They are the ones who can see it. The naturalists and the state institutions (like the police) do not feel it at all. In his life, even after the destruction of his cart, the donkey did not ride at all because he was tired, and he made the journey tax search the death of a close relative, the donkey.
Despite the good gestures that I will talk about until you first see them, there were some failures or disadvantages.
- Mixing the viewer in the overall journey, it seems from the initial talk that the place of the colony in Cairo, then flash flash scene the moment the father left the injured son shows that in the lake, expressed that the colony in the face of the general sea and the journey from north to south. This is good for the foreign viewer, but for the son of the Egyptian environment (like me) it is confusing.
- Photography in places familiar to look, for example, was filmed in the city of «Banha - Kalubia» as Sohag as well as in more than one place, it is confusing to those who actually spoil those places.
- To include in the dialogue a lot of cliches without spirit; to show the suffering or express the meaning of the word clearly, I see it is rude and bet on the stupidity of the viewer, but it would be suitable for the ignorant of those scenes in fact, and excellent for the foreign in general.
- The phrase "the beautiful Egyptian bureaucracy" in the mouth of one of the beggars with physical disabilities in the context of comical comic, a joke that comes out of a certain cultural level does not affect only then, it was certainly to be presented to that in the character that she said. While it came in an intrusive manner, but it caused laughter viewers to learn the word.
A must-watched film
xarzipori18 October 2020
I cried a lot, laughed & felt this so much.
mima_littleangel11 August 2021
This is one of the most brilliant movies ever made, especially Egyptian ones. It is so realistic, depicts the real life of those who are underprivileged in Egypt along with the case of his illness which makes it very hard to survive. It felt like witnessing a real scene in life. As if I went on the road trip with them as a Camera person. I can't describe how much this movie touched me and how much it helped me clear out of my thoughts on how the world truly is. ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED.
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