After the ghost of his dead father appears to him demanding revenge for his conspiring uncle and mother, the Sufi Ahmed (Hamlet) must face the rigid patriarchal world of his slum and challenge the status quo.
Ahmed, an 18-year-old from a slum in Cairo, buries his father—the king of horse-driven carriages collecting junk in the city. His uncle takes over and marries Ahmed’s mother to keep the wealth within the family. The slum is long overdue for urban renewal as part of a national government plan to get rid of informal settlements. Ahmed continues to work for his rigid uncle. He escapes his bleak existence by going to Sufi festivals (moulids) and loses himself in transcendental rituals. The apparition of Ahmed’s father appears to him in a moulid demanding revenge towards his uncle. Ahmed now must face a living patriarch to avenge a dead one. The tragic vicissitudes in Ahmed’s journey force him to escape the slum and seek solace in the spiritual world. Ahmed’s path towards change ends when the slum is demolished, and new high-rises take over. Our adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy is set in contemporary Egypt and is steeped in the unique and rarely filmed universe of Sufi mysticism.
