These Girls

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: These Girls, directed by Tahani Rached

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

A girl rides a galloping horse through the middle of heavy traffic—a striking metaphor for the chaotic lives of homeless teenage girls in Cairo. Meet Tata, Reda, Maryam, Dunya, and Abeer (whose father wants to kill her because she is pregnant). Surrounded by a circus of activity, the girls fight, laugh, brag, sniff glue and pop pills to help them deal with assaults and danger. They confront the cops, argue with guys hanging out on the streets, nurse their babies, and sleep in derelict cars and alleyways to escape being beaten, kidnapped, or raped. Fiercely protective of each other, they confide in “big sister” Hind, a middle-class religious woman who visits them to provide non-judgmental love and advice. Rached’s respect for the girls’ courage and sassiness shines throughout the film. Alternately rowdy and tender, joyous and terrifying, the dangerous carnival of these girls’ lives resonates palpably in this masterful and compassionate film. - Lynne Fernie

Interview with Tahani Rached:


Interview With Tahani Rached - These Girls via Noolmusic.com

Neighbors

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Neighbors, directed by Tahani Rached

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Egypt’s history of kings, colonialism, and revolution still whisper through the abandoned mansions and opulent villas of Garden City, a once-exclusive neighbourhood that housed the ruling elites in Cairo. Gathering together a cast of charismatic characters—shopkeepers, servants living in roof-top rooms, the US ambassador, sophisticated Egyptians, and now-aging children of English diplomats—with gorgeous cinematography and rare excerpts from early Egyptian cinema, master documentarian Tahani Rached creates a fascinating human and architectural river that flows through a century of political upheaval. This once elegant area is increasingly encroached upon by ubiquitous highrise apartments and the prison-like architecture of the US and Canadian embassies. (An American “beautification project” translates into shrubs set in pots in front of cement security pylons.) Like all good art, Neighbors deftly avoids easy nostalgia and presents a complex past that is both an eloquent allegory and a serious critique of the present. - Lynne Fernie

The film's website is here.

Au Chic Resto Pop

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Au Chic Resto Pop, directed by Tahani Rached

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Everybody’s welcome at the Resto Pop, a restaurant run by a group of “misfits, outcasts, losers and punks” that caters to single moms, hungry kids, the poor and unemployed in Montreal’s East End. The film plunges us into the dynamic social and political world of the restaurant as the staff prepares and serves food that would otherwise be thrown out because of minor imperfections. Structured around autobiographical songs written and performed by the staff, Au Chic Resto Pop mutates the participatory documentary form into an innovative “docu-musical.” People come not only for the healthy $1 meals, but to celebrate birthdays, hold graduation ceremonies for elementary school students, or just hang out and socialize over a good dinner. The film shines with the music, hopes, and dreams of marginalized people struggling to take control of their diets, their jobs, and their lives. - Lynne Fernie

This video appears to be the entire movie, but it is in unsubtitled (Canadian) French. You win some, you lose some.