Life After Siham

Siham is no longer alive. And yet she is still here, in the letters she wrote to her husband, Waguih, in the 1970s. And in the way he still feels her presence in the house. And in the films their son Namir made. Siham is still smiling in the hundreds of hours of footage Namir shot of her during his film career. These images are interwoven with scenes in which Waguih and Namir come to terms with her death, and are juxtaposed with excerpts from the films of the celebrated Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine.

Siham always wanted her son to make a “real” film, with real actors. Now, famous movie stars reenact her early life. A voice-over and intertitles transform scenes from classic films into biographical moments from Siham’s life. In this way, Namir Abdel Messeeh tells the story of his parents: their beginnings in Egypt, their relationship before his birth, their move to France. And thus, after her death, Siham has become the central figure in a real film by her son.