On the Fence

Synopsis: After her mother has a bad dream, Nesrine travels from Cairo, where she has lived since 2002, to her hometown Tima in Upper Egypt, in an attempt to save their old home. The filmmaker takes us back and forth between two worlds, belonging to neither. She struggles with the idea of selling the house, as it holds the last memories from her beloved father. She tries to clean it and do the needed repairs in vain as the wreckage is beyond repair. She finds some old tapes recorded by her father, some notes and an ambush of memories.

---

Director’s Biography: Nesrine El-Zayat was born in Sohag, Upper Egypt. She started as a film critic and journalist at Rosa El-Youssef magazine. She made two short documentaries, the first, “Ward No. 6”, won the Jury Prize for the Human Rights Competition at the Baghdad International Film Festival and the Jury Prize for Best Short Documentary at the National Festival for Egyptian Cinema in 2009. The second, “The Black Dress” (2013), was screened in festivals in Egypt, India, France, and Morocco. “On the Fence” is her latest and first feature documentary film. It premiered at the Cairo International Film Festival in December 2020.