Ibrahim El-Abyad

Marwan Hamed's film is set in the poor quarters of Cairo. Ibrahim, played by Ahmed El Sakka, witnessed his father's murder as a child and has grown up inside crime ever since. Mahmoud Abdel Aziz plays the boss of the older generation, Amr Waked his rival, and Hend Sabry the woman Ibrahim attaches himself to. The film belongs to a moment in Egyptian cinema when poverty, state corruption and life in the slums were being shown from inside rather than from above. Hamed does not stylise the violence, and that choice became the most argued-over thing about it; the harshness of the scenes was both praised and called excessive. The best passage is the sequence on the train, where tension built in a crowded, narrow space separates itself from the film's general noise and becomes genuinely good cinema. Hesham Nazih wrote the score. It opened on 27 May 2009. Who it is for: viewers who like Egyptian crime cinema and Ahmed El Sakka. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by graphic violence, or troubled by the romanticising of a criminal world.