Escaping Tel Aviv

Sherif Arafa's 2009 Egyptian film is a spy thriller. In an apparently ordinary marriage, a woman learns a concealed truth about who her husband is and finds herself in the middle of an international conflict. An Egyptian intelligence officer enters the affair on a mission where failure is not accepted, and the story moves between Cairo and Tel Aviv. It is among the few Egyptian commercial productions made on a large budget that put the spy genre directly into a political frame. The other side is drawn in one dimension and the account openly takes a side; regional politics is not the background of the film but its direct subject. Karim Abdel Aziz and Mona Zaki star and the action is its foremost quality. Who it's for: viewers who like Egyptian action and spy stories. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a balanced political view; the film is one-sided.