Voy! Voy! Voy!

Omar Hilal's 2023 Egyptian film starts from a real case. Hassan is a security guard in debt looking for a way to Europe, and when he learns that the national blind football team is travelling to a tournament in Poland he decides to feign blindness and join it. The preparation produces comedy: the eye doctor's report, the training and sharing a room with genuinely blind athletes. As the film advances the tone changes; the cost of what Hassan is doing to the people on the team emerges and the humour gives way to shame. The account treats migration without accusation and makes a hero of nobody. It was Egypt's entry for the Academy Awards. Who it's for: viewers who like Arab comedy and films with a social subject. Who it's not for: anyone uncomfortable with blindness as a joke; the first half rests on it.