We Are the Bus People

Hussein Kamal's 1979 Egyptian film opens with two neighbours arguing with a bus conductor. Taken to the police station, they are folded by mistake into a group of suspects and sent to a maximum security prison. The question is a mistake that cannot be undone. It is clear that both are innocent, but the system will not step back; what they see inside moves to the centre of the narrative and the film, which began as comedy, grows heavy. Adel Emam and Abdel Moneim Madbouly lead. It is counted among the few Egyptian films of the late seventies to take political detention as so direct a subject. Who it's for: those who follow Egyptian cinema and prison narratives with a political charge. Who it's not for: viewers for whom scenes of torture would sit heavily; the film changes register completely in its second half.