8 characters skew lifelines that never really intersect in the suburb of Heliopolis in Cairo within a frame of time of 24 hours all in a very stagnant state and never achieving goals.

A mix-up leads Ra'fat Rostum to a ministerial seat that he was never meant to have. As he successfully holds onto his office for a long time, he starts having violent nightmares and asks his office manager, Ateya, to accompany him to the North Coast in an attempt to stop the nightmares.

A public panel about the unfinished film, OF DUST AND RUBIES the last work of the Sudanese filmmaker, painter and poet Hussein Sharrife, who passed away in 2005 before starting the editing process of the film. Through showing some excerpts of the footage, the panel presents different thoughts and questions by five panelists including Hussein Sharrife’s daughter and one of his close associates.

Shams is a young girl who resides in the local neighborhood of Ain Shams. The life of the family turns into a tragedy when they learn their young Shams has leukemia, and they try to fulfill her only wish to visit Downtown Cairo.

In the fading grandeur of downtown Cairo, Khalid, a 35-year-old filmmaker is struggling to make a film that captures the pulse of his city at a moment when all around him dreams as much as buildings are disintegrating. With the help of his friends who send him footage from their lives in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin, he finds the strength to keep going through the difficulty and beauty of living IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY.

Love emerges in the details in this innovatively simple day-in-the-life story of a married couple who one random Monday discover each other anew due to a change in routine.

Tamer El Said appropriates another family’s amateur footage to reclaim a memory of a lost sibling. The installation invites visitors to look for their own recollections in the same footage, creating an act of collective remembrance in the process.

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.

We follow the journey of former soldier Nassif, who fled the war in Iraq by hiding in dark cinemas. During this time, he used to watch his favorite film, “Papillon” (1973), starring Steve McQueen. Nowadays, he is looking for this film among the Iraqi cinemas’ ruins. The search for this lost film copy in the old and obsolete cinemas becomes the sole purpose of Nassif and his primary motivation to leave his house. “Take me to the Cinema” allows us to discover Baghdad through Nassif’s eyes as he takes us to streets that contrast with his silent and quiet world. A lot has changed in today’s Iraq. The street where cinema theaters were is now a market that sells military uniforms. It is crowded with young men, fitting military shirts and shoes. The quest for “Papillon” becomes the quest of character, who does not want to acknowledge the transformations of his city, and who wants to cling on to its luminous past through the light of cinema and his inner world.