ADFF 2011 Review: 18 Days

The Egypt revolution was a hard time for the country, but it was also a massive success that proved that the youth has the power to change a nation. During that time, ten directors and dozens of actors and crew came together to work on ten different short films about the topic and the result is ’18 Days’, a successful anthology that works on many levels despite being uneven in quality.

When watching a film about the Egypt revolution, one would expect the film to be gloomy and depressing and heavy-handed about the topic at hand. And that’s where ’18 Days’ succeeds the most in my opinion – it balances out the drama and hard-hitting content with having a sense of humor about it all. As the result, the viewer isn’t worn out and the message that needs to be delivered is done in a more effective fashion.

The very first short film ‘Retention’ is a crowd pleaser that’s a little too obvious on its metaphors, but has enough humor and snappy dialogue to entertain audiences and set the mood for the film. The next short ‘God’s Creation’ is beautifully done and the narration has layers that add a whole new aspect to it along with its downbeat ending. ’19-19′ has its moments, but lacks a strong pay-off and runs a little too long despite having some excellent acting. ‘When the Flood Hits You’ is once again hilarious and maybe the most balanced short film out of the bunch with clever writing and acting. ‘Curfew’ looks visually polished but once again the pay-off for its length isn’t worth the runtime. ‘Revolution Cookies’ is a decent short with some good acting and dialogue that compensates for its overlong runtime.

It’s from here on out that the quality becomes more uneven and some of the weaker short films begin to come into the picture. The problem with anthologies is that not every short film is of equal quality, and ’18 Days’ was smart enough to program the weaker ones towards the end. ‘Tahrir 2/2′ has a different perspective and a fresh story to tell, but runs way too long and lags in the middle without having a strong ending. ‘Window’ is the weakest short of the bunch, which tries to be more moody without any dialogue but fails in gripping the audience and just plods along to an even weaker ending. ‘Interior/Exterior’ lacks a strong script to support itself and comes off as a filler rather than an actual short.

But just when you think things are headed towards mediocrity comes the final short film ‘Ashraf Serberto’, which is not only the most polished short film out of them all but has the most amount of energy and entertaining content to it that perfectly ends the film. It’s funny, inspiring and extremely well written to get an applause from the audience and that’s exactly what happens by the time the film is over. Ending on a strong note is very important for any film, and that’s exactly what it achieves here.

Overall, ’18 Days’ is a successful indie film experiment and manages to showcase different aspects of the time period without becoming too heavy-handed. The omission of a few weak short films would have led to a more consistent product, but the stronger shorts more than compensate for it.

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