Kiss Me Not

+US Premiere
+Egypt

Saturday, 9/29
7:30 p.m.

Buy tickets >>>

KISS ME NOT  بلاش تبوسني
Ahmed Amer
narrative
85 mins  / 2017
Egypt
Arabic with English subtitles
US premiere

Fajr (Yasmin Raeis) is a famous actress in Egypt playing the lead role in a young director’s feature debut. But after shooting most of the film, she refuses to participate in a kissing scene, and the filmmakers scramble to find a solution or face changing the entire film. ًWhile this fiasco ensues, one of the crew members begins filming a documentary about the history of kissing in Egyptian cinema, a project that incorporates archival footage from classic films and interviews with renowned Egyptian directors Mohamed Khan and Khairy Beshara. While the documentary temporarily distracts the filmmakers from the problem at hand, the situation with Fajr becomes more complicated than they could have imagined. This comedic mockumentary tackles tradition through an interrogation of Egypt’s present society and its filmmaking past.

Select Festivals:
Shanghai International Film Festival, China, 2018
Miami Film Festival, US, 2018
Dubai International Film Festival, UAE, 2017

Ahmed Amer was a corporate banker before starting his filmmaking career. He worked in the US as an actor and assistant editor on documentaries and television. He was an Arabic script consultant for the Looking for Oum Kulthum. His writing credits include Ibrahim El-Batout’s Winter of Discontent (2012) and Sherif El-Bendary’s Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim (2016).