“Yomeddine”: Light of the Judgment Day
Genre：Adventure/Comedy/Drama
Director：A.B. Shawky
Cast：Rady Gamal、Ahmed Abdelhafiz
Viola's Rating：6.4
Every year on the last Sunday of January is the World Leprosy Day,
and as Easter is the Christian holiday which brings hope, instead of hope, lepers
are looking forward to the Judgment Day, the day on which they will be treated
equally. A very rare Egyptian feature film focusing on a patient with leprosy
that discusses about empathy, religion and sympathy is going to be released on
the last of May, 2019.
Instead of casting A-list actors or
actresses, “Yomeddine” is a film with a protagonist acted by a non-professional
actor who actually lives in a leper colony still, and the plot is mainly about
an Egyptian leper, Beshay, and his orphaned apprentice friend, Obama, leave the
borders of the leper colony for the first time and embark on a journey across
Egypt to search for what is left of their families.
When a person grows up and only stays at
one place, everyone he or she knows within that area is called “family”. For Beshay,
fellow lepers, the doctors and Obama are the only friends he has, or
furthermore, his family. He never thinks about his original family because lepers
are left at the colony, and they are homeless and hopeless. Through Beshay and
Obama’s journey, the audience gets to consider the true meaning of family.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease,
is a long-term infection by bacteria, which is believed to origin from China,
Egypt and India. Therefore, although it’s not very contagious, with the vast
amount of patients with leprosy, people are afraid of lepers and thus separating
people by placing them in leper colonies are commonly seen all over the world
back then. Nowadays, people don’t know much about the disease, and “Yomeddine”
displays that except for deformed hands and legs, which might not look pretty,
there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Something interesting about “Yomeddine” is
that the title means “The Judgment Day” in Arabic, and the protagonist Beshay
is a Christian in the most-Muslim Egypt. However, leprosy means unclean in the
Holy Bible; therefore, how Beshay insists on his belief and stays optimistic is
the key theme of the flick. Although “Yomeddine” doesn’t preach at all, the
motion picture is fraught with religion attributes and reminds people of Book
of Job.
Basically “Yomeddine” is a regular road
movie. Beshay and Obama take all kinds of transportation they manage to reach:
boat, car, donkey, train and of course, on foot. Before they leave for the
journey, you’d thought the background is set during a time when there’s no
automobile, but the world is great, and not until they walk out of the colony
did they realize just like moviegoers do.
Though “Yomeddine” doesn’t have
good-looking protagonists, its sincerity and the hope it brings to the audience
with Beshay’s belief in religion can’t be brighter.
Picture Credit: IMDb
Comments
Post a Comment