Jay Weissberg There are two gods in “Souad,” Allah and smart phones, but in a battle between the two it’s clear who’ll be the winner.
Ayten Amin’s bold second feature is brilliantly alive to the contradictions of teenage life in conservative Egypt, where the pressures of social media clash with traditional religious strictures, leading to schizophrenic lives of acute unease.
The film is remarkable not just for its razor-sharp, nonjudgmental insight, which captures lives as well as environment with a cleareyed neorealist sensibility, but also for the nuanced performances making each character rounded yet ultimately unknowable.
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