Land of Fear

Daoud Abdel Sayed's 2000 Egyptian film follows a police officer chosen at the end of the sixties for a particular assignment: to infiltrate the criminal world and stay there. He gives up his name, his past and his standing, and begins living under a new identity among smugglers and nightclub owners. As the years pass the question changes: is this man still on assignment, or did the assignment end long ago with nobody telling him? The people who sent him disappear, there are no documents, there is no proof. Ahmed Zaki's performance carries that uncertainty. The film begins as a crime story and turns into a question about identity. It is among the few works in Egyptian cinema to treat the relationship between the state and the individual with this degree of suspicion, and one of Abdel Sayed's most debated. Who it's for: viewers who like crime films with political subtext in Arab cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a clear resolution of the plot; the film withholds the answer, deliberately.