After the Battle

"Now that a number of documentaries have dealt with the 2011 Egyptian uprising at Cairo’s Tahrir Square… it comes as no surprise that the events have been applied to a fictional scenario, and by no less than a prominent Egyptian filmmaker, Yousry Nasrallah (Gate of Sun). Ably using the turmoil at Tahrir as his backdrop, Nasrallah’s After the Battle follows a burgeoning, ill-fated romance between two characters uniquely impacted by social upheaval… The director’s use of existing events to form the movie’s backbone led one colleague to compare it to Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, which took place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention…

Nasrallah introduces passionate advertising executive Reem (Menna Chalaby), a secular Egyptian woman deeply moved by the uprising and intent on maintaining its momentum. However, her privileged angle on the situation limits her understanding of the stakes among members of Egypt’s lower classes. That perspective evolves when she encounters the downtrodden Mahmoud (Nahed El Sebai), a talented horse rider involuntarily looped into the ’Battle of the Camel,’ a February attack on protestors in Tahrir Square that had bloody results memorialized by YouTube… Wandering through a series of heated debates, After the Battle finally reaches an enthralling representation of community activism with its climactic scene, set at an actual protest… "—Eric Kohn, Indiewire

"Nasrallah’s depiction of political wrangling in Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak is extremely moving, particularly in showing how women’s rights and women’s causes were quickly shunted aside."—Amy Taubin, Film Comment