‘The Settlement’ review: Egyptian debut is a bleak and dispiriting revenge thriller

Dir/scr: Mohamed Rashad. Egypt/France/Germany/Qatar/Saudi Arabia. 2025. 93mins

In a bleak and lawless nook of Alexandria, Egypt, a delinquent 23-year-old son is pulled again into the household fold following his father’s premature demise in a office accident. Hossam (Adham Shukr) has been provided his father’s outdated job at a steel working manufacturing unit as a type of under-the-counter compensation, and his 12-year-old brother Maro (Ziad Islam) insists on quitting faculty and becoming a member of him. However tensions simmer, and the brothers fixate on the concept their father’s demise must be avenged. There’s a grim inevitability to this crudely-plotted, factually-inspired first fiction characteristic from Egyptian documentary filmmaker Mohamed Rashad, a way of assured doom for each character. This can be an correct illustration, however it’s a singularly dispiriting viewing expertise.

A way of assured doom for each character

Rashad’s earlier work consists of a number of brief movies and the award-winning feature-length documentary Little Eagles. The Settlement’s journey to completion was supported by quite a few festivals and funding our bodies, together with the Berlinale World Cinema Fund. As such, it’s prone to discover additional publicity on the pageant circuit following its Berlin Views premiere, though its theatrical prospects could also be restricted.

Surly, stewing with resentment and clearly not the sharpest software within the field, Hossam has a everlasting chip on his shoulder. His wild behaviour – he disappears from the household dwelling for lengthy stretches, offers medication and hangs out with disreputable gang members – has earned him a shady fame. “Usually, you’ll by no means be allowed to work right here,” says his new boss, having pointedly passed over the query on the recruitment kind about felony data.

However Hossam appears aggrieved that folks assume badly of him – he screams at his invalid mom (Hanadi Abdel Khalek), whose remedy cash he stole, for telling his late father concerning the theft. The idea of creating a mattress after which mendacity in it appears solely alien to him. He’s, it needs to be mentioned, an especially tough character with whom to sympathise. And Shukr’s unpolished efficiency doesn’t give Hossam a lot in the best way of depth or texture, so he’s additionally not notably attention-grabbing as a central determine within the movie.

A feminine co-worker, considerably inexplicably, takes an curiosity in Hossam, and calls him anonymously and repeatedly. It’s a tool that’s presumably meant to trace at a happier future for Hossam, however in follow it serves to make him appear creepy and threatening as he lurks behind bits of heavy equipment, spying on the ladies within the manufacturing unit and making an attempt to work out which one is his secret admirer. The central narrative, of a person who has made errors however who’s making an attempt to show his life round, is undermined by the truth that Hossam is a thug who makes horrible selections every day, and who completely fails to guard his youthful brother from hurt.

Probably the most profitable aspect of the image is its vividly evoked sense of place. The neighbourhood the place Hossam and his household reside is a blighted wasteland, strewn with lumps of concrete and brawling males. And the manufacturing unit is a cacophonous hell-scape of limb-chewing angle grinders and large rumbling lathes. No person wears eye safety. Watching the slight determine of Maro weaving via the manufacturing unit flooring or Hossam zoning out as his machine judders fitfully is as annoying as any horror film. The entire manufacturing unit is an industrial accident ready to occur – and it doesn’t have to attend too lengthy.