The Bus Driver

Atef El-Tayeb's 1982 Egyptian film follows Hassan, a bus driver. His father's carpentry workshop is being lost over unpaid tax. Hassan goes round the family one by one to raise the money. Each puts forward an account of their own; the narrative shows the values changed by the open-door policy of the eighties through those meetings, and no one helps. Nour El-Sherif leads. The film is counted among the founding works of the realist vein in Egypt. The images were taken on the street and in real locations. Who it's for: viewers of Egyptian cinema and films of social criticism. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a hopeful close; the film ends hard.