Amid the starry throngs of the glamour-obsessed Cannes Film Festival, a middle-aged nonprofessional actor whose face is scared by leprosy has emerged as 1 of the festival’s breakout stars.
Amid the starry throngs of the glamour-crazed Cannes Film Festival, a middle-aged nonprofessional actor whose face is scarred by leprosy has emerged as one of the festival’s breakout performers.
The Egyptian drama « Yomeddine, » which is competing for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, stars Rady Gamal, who was discovered at a leper colony in Egypt. In the film, which many critics called heartwarming if sentimental, Gamal’s Beshay rides a donkey-pulled cart on a road trip, along with an orphan boy, played by Ahmed Abdelhafiz, also a nonprofessional. Both are uneasily searching for the families that abandoned them years before.
Though it has shades of both David Lynch’s « The Straight Story » and « The Elephant Man, » »Yomeddine » offers an authentic portrait of social outcasts seldom seen in cinema. And much of the film’s tender tale is owed to Gamal’s understated performance. Variety said he « holds the screen in a performance characterized by wounded dignity. »
The film was directed by first-time feature filmmaker A. B. Shawky, who’s Egyptian-Austrian. He first encountered the Abu Zaabal leper colony in Egypt, which is run by Catholic nuns, in a documentary short he created as his thesis at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
« We just wanted to show different faces, » Shawky told reporters Thursday. « I just wanted to tell a story through their eyes. »
Yet neither « Yomeddine » star made it to Cannes. Shawky said French visas were prepared for both, but they weren’t allowed to board their plane because of a stopover in Zurich. With their passports arranged at the last minute, there wasn’t time to find a direct flight, said Shawky.
Gamal, he said, lives a life much like his character’s — his leprosy was cured but not before it deformed him as a child — with the exception that he maintains a good relationship with his family. The filmmaker originally wrote the film for a woman who became too sick for filming. When he began casting again, Gamal was the first one through the door. « He had this really amazing energy about him, » said Shawky.
In the often superficial medium of film, « Yomeddine » seeks a different kind of beauty.
« It should be a feel-good movie, » said Shawky, « because they feel good about themselves. »
