As Egypt sinks deeper into poverty and mounting debt, new cities rise across the country while prisons fill with dissenting voices. Who are these cities built for, what desires or ambivalence do they inspire, and at what cost? Since such questions cannot be voiced safely, a ventriloquist, songs, and advertisements evoke an apparently bygone age of fascism. Referencing the Telefoni Bianchi films that preceded Mussolini’s propaganda cinema, the work turns the enduring legacy of constructing new capitals into material for expressing political criticism and fragile hope through satire. 

CAPITAL is a short film that satirizes the brutal fiction of urban development. New cities rising across Egypt promise images of prosperity and the future, yet behind them lie realities of poverty, repression, and exclusion. Referencing the “white telephone” films of Fascist-era Italy, al-Sharif exposes how glamorous imagery and the language of propaganda conceal the desires of power.
Yet CAPITAL takes aim at more than the failures of a particular state. Al-Sharif’s work, long engaged with images of Palestine, does not stop at representing a single place. Instead, it probes the contradictory structures that shape our world and the ways images help sustain them.
Twisting the recurring ambitions of power concealed beneath the language of progress and development, the film asks who is excluded from images that promise a better future.

• Screenplay Basma al-SHARIF
• Cinematography Davide ARTUSI, Simon VERONEG, Basma al-SHARIF
• Edit Basma al-SHARIF
• Cast Diego MARCON

Basma al-SHARIF | Basma al-SHARIF | basmalsharif@gmail.com