I have to admit that I actually do not watch too many films that were not made in America. The main reason is perhaps that I usually have the urge to see the latest (big) releases, precisely because those are most talked about. As a result, it is often you only find out about great films made in the rest of the world if they have an Oscar nomination or receive attention because of a very specific reason. Nevertheless, I sometimes try to watch movies that I haven’t heard about and that was the case at The Nile Hilton Incident.
Noredin (Fares Fares) works as a detective at the police in Cairo. It is not a well-paid job and as a result he (and the rest of the police) don’t always abide by the rules. Corruption and extortion are therefore part of the daily activities. When a murder is committed at the Nile Hilton hotel and a chambermaid sees the perpetrator, Noredin is assigned to the case. A case he wants to solve, but in which he quickly becomes entangled in the interests of various parties. The film is set in 2011, against the background of the Egyptian revolution.
Although this film received many favorable reviews, it was not entirely my thing. I regularly thought the story was difficult to follow and as a result it was hard to be completely absorbed by the film. It is certainly a title with atmosphere and one that has a lot of film noir like features. The acting is solid and it has plenty to offer if film noir is your genre, but this was unfortunately not a non-American film that I fully embraced.
[score6]