Still: Al Baraneya - Ashgan El-Hamus

Ask writer-director Ashgan El-Hamus whether she feels more Dutch or Egyptian and the Amsterdam-based filmmaker has a ready answer. “My dad always used to say you’re not half-half, you’re both - and that is exactly how it feels,” she says of her dual nationality.

The director’s father Sabri Saad El-Hamus was 22 years old when he moved from Egypt to the Netherlands to pursue what turned out to be a highly successful career as an actor. Ashgan was born in the Netherlands in 1993 and she has now directed her first feature, Al Baraneya*. The film (a world premiere in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori) is named after the village not far from Cairo where her family is originally from. (Her brother Shady El-Hamus is also a well-known director. Another brother, Shahine, is an actor).

Ashgan’s father is from Cairo, but five years ago he took her to Al Baraneya, where many of her relatives still live. “It’s his favourite place in the whole Egypt.”

During that first visit, “the idea for the film already popped up.” She was there with a new-born baby, her first child, and “felt very overwhelmed by the feeling of community” she experienced with her relatives, most of whom she had never met before.

“It’s so weird how in Holland and a lot of western countries, we have moved so far away from our natural way of living with the kids, with the elderly and each other,” she reflects. In Al Baraneya, by contrast, young and old shares homes together and there is kindness and camaraderie between the generations.

In the film, Amal (Reem Amer), a young woman living in the village, is pregnant while her beloved grandmother is growing old and frail. Money is tight and a landowner is trying to buy the family’s land. They wonder if they might have a better life in the city.

The large ensemble cast mainly consists of the director’s own relatives, playing lightly fictionalised versions of themselves. “We tried to make the whole film around the family and their dynamic,” Ashgan remembers. \

But not everybody agreed to appear on front of camera. “I cast my uncle from Cairo because the uncle in the village said no, and I combined family members with some other kids from the village that wanted to join.”

In many western-made movies set in Arab countries, she notes, societies are depicted as being repressive and intensely patriarchal. However, as she spent time in Al Baraneya, she realised that “behind closed doors, the women are the boss.” She was determined to put women at the centre of the movie, and not to portray them as victims.

Amer, who is a professional actress, was the only cast member who read the script. Ashgan gave the other performers the outlines of the story and their characters, “and then we rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed.”

“I think that part is often mis-understood: that people think that with non-actors you just go with the flow on set, but actually it takes soooo much preparation to rehearse every single scene with them, so that by the time we were on set they knew exactly what we were going to do,” Ashgan explains.

“Because of these boundaries, everybody felt safe and we could indeed freewheel on set!”

The director pays further tribute to her Egyptian crew who were able to shoot “guerrilla-style” in the village. to cope with “60 kids on set every day, screaming.”

“Obviously this village was super small and they had never seen Dutch people before our family came to visit. It was a happening!” she remembers. The crew were also able to deal with the far stricter working conditions in Cairo, where permits were needed.

Al Baraneya was produced by Frank Hoeve’s Baldr Film, a company with whom Ashgan has a long association. She did an internship there when she was studying at the Netherlands Film Academy. Years later, when she had the idea for her movie (“which is basically an Egyptian film made with Dutch money”) she knew that Hoeve, who has made films everywhere from the Philippines to India, would be the perfect partner.

“I thought he [Hoeve] knows how this goes. I just called him and said I have this idea set in Egypt and I want someone brave enough to do it…”

Hoeve agreed. Seera was the Egyptian co-producer and Belgian outfit Czar also came aboard. Benelux distribution is handled by Vedette with the release likely to be in early 2027.

The film is also expected to have a premiere at one of the major Arab festivals later this year, but will the movie also show in Al Baraneya?

 “We wanted to do a big screening in the village, on the square, but I think the families are a bit embarrassed,” the director admits her cast members/relatives who are a little bashful about seeing themselves on the big screen. Nonetheless, several of them are expected to make it to the Netherlands for the Dutch premiere when that is finally confirmed.

Find out more about the Dutch line-up in Venice here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund