ARABIAN SIGHTS, TED PEDAS AWARD

Happy Birthday

SARAH GOHER
Egypt, 2025
92 minutes, Color

Sarah Goher's acclaimed debut feature is a tour (de force) of modern-day Cairo, from its upper-class enclaves, to its streets teeming with motor scooters and life, to the beautifully observed world of 8-year-old Toha and her loving family of fisherwomen. As Toha dons a scarf for a day's work as an upper-class family's maid, she asks her "friend" Nelly, "What is a wish?" Having never had a birthday party, Toha wouldn't know. Nelly is not really her friend, but Toha doesn't know that either, so she determines that Nelly will have the perfect birthday and latches on to her otherwise indifferent employer, Nelly's mother, Leila (Nelly Karim), to make it so. In portraying Toha, captivating child actor Doha Ramadan expresses both the naiveté of an unschooled girl who thinks wishing is willing, and the clever machinations of a native intelligence, in case it is not.—Judy Bloch

In Arabic with English subtitles