Excursions in the Dark

Cairo, February 2011. The dictator Hosni Mubarak has been deposed, and calm has returned to the streets. Gone are the young men shouting their demands for freedom and bread, the huge and sometimes violent demonstrations, and the self-immolations. But the dark streets, alleyways and city squares seem strangely empty, even for nighttime. It is as if the life has been sucked out of them, as if the Apocalypse has been raging. Filmed in stylish, moody black and white, the static, angular street scenes are accompanied by fragments of conversations with Egyptians recalling their dreams in the period when they rose up against the regime. Their memories are very personal. We hear about a stranger suddenly appearing in the speaker's home, about snakes crawling through the walls, and about people cheering on the streets. The events being recalled take place once more, before the rebels' closed eyes, transforming the Arab Spring into a Freudian dream, a projection of the unconscious. Director Kaya Behkalam balances his film at the cusp of reality and dream, of historical account and mythology, and of documentary and fiction. In the words of the social philosopher Walter Benjamin that open the film, Behkalam is seeking the "moment that the historian takes upon himself the task of dream interpretation."