Al Baraneya

Ashgan El-Hamus wraps us in the warm tumble of life of a single Egyptian family in her feature debut, which though fictional is underpinned by a strong scaffolding of truth. The title refers to the village where Amal (Reem Amer, the sole professional cast member) lives with her family, which will be added to before too long by the baby she is pregnant with. We meet her as she and her younger sisters hawk strings of jasmine flowers to drivers to perfume their cars. They have been collected before daybreak near the brimful farm home they share with their parents (Sara Ali El-Hadary and Alsayed Mohamed El-Hamus), additional siblings and grandmother (Fatma Farahat El-Hadary). Scenes like the jasmine selling are often used in films from this region to suggest the hard-knock life of protagonists but though showing it isn’t always an easy sell, El-Hamus’ focus is on the happiness of the girls and their sweet interactions with one another.

The train to Cairo trundles past at regular intervals, a reminder of “elsewhere” and a source of income for Amal’s husband (Mostafa Noureldin), as the pair both visit the building site they hope will ultimately become their own home.

El-Hamus and co-writer Roelof-Jan Minneboo build the film around small details of life for the family. Grandma’s words of advice in between soaking up the TV shows she loves or the near-silent physical farm work that her father Sayed and the boys of the family engage in. The drama is lightly driven by the question over whether to accept an offer for the land the family live on, but this is mainly a female-focused character study of Amal as she moves towards motherhood. The women are the hub of the film as well as the home, so that debate around the future of the farm is kept to the margins in favour of considering Amal’s place within it.

While the family unit is strong, it’s noticeable that there’s nobody else of Amal’s age in her immediate orbit most of the time, which makes visits from her cousin Rania (Salma Khattab), who works in the beauty industry in Cairo, more than just an opportunity to try the latest hand cream. When Amal makes trips to the city, El-Hamus again avoids any sort of melodrama, showing why the bustle of life there is attractive to Amal without overselling it.

Loose and responsive camerawork from cinematographer Douwe Hennink makes his camera feel as though it is part of the family too, happily drawing on the inexhaustible energy of the children. Dutch-born filmmaker El-Hamus has Egyptian heritage and her extended family, who live in Al Baraneya, play fictionalised versions of themselves in the film, which makes it feel almost docu-real in places. Scenes involving the younger children are largely observational, with the director, who shows notable assurance and skill for a first-time feature-maker, having cleverly orchestrated a space in which she can simply capture them being themselves as they play together. Amer deserves a lot of credit for not sticking out within this environment, slotting into the melting pot of the family without appearing like an added exotic ingredient, while bringing a thoughtfulness to her character’s inner journey.

The delight of Al Baraneya is in its details, whether it's the simple pleasure of children engaging in an impromptu fashion show on the simple moment of poetry offered by a kite wheeling in the air. The filmmaker offers a jasmine-perfumed love letter to family life, where closeness is chaotically comforting rather than stifling and where decisions feel like a collective pursuit.

Reviewed on: 03 Sep 2026