Should someone sacrifice his father’s rights for the sake of building his own future? Or is the luxury of choice just a distant dream for those in poverty? In an isolated industrial area, governed by its own laws and values, director Mohamed Rashad weaves the world of “The Settlement”, with all its compelling contradictions. Rashad told me about the challenges he faced in bringing this unique story to life, and the obstacles he to transforming his film from an idea into reality.
What inspired you to start making "the Settlement"?
I wrote the first treatment for the film in 2019. It came out of several situations, obsessions and ideas. I have a fascination with the industrial environment: I love watching people do crafts with their hands, and I see it as an engrossing source of material that hasn’t been exploited enough in Egyptian cinema.
I always had a very general image of someone working in an industrial environment but not belonging to it. That was until 2018, when by chance I met someone who told me that his father, who had been a construction worker at a certain company, had fallen from a high floor and died. The company offered the son his father’s job in exchange for him not filing a lawsuit against them. The son was forced to accept, because he needed a job.
From his story, I sensed his feeling of guilt, because he was building his future at the expense of his late father’s rights.
At the same time, I started searching and getting to know young men from a district of Alexandria called Nagaa Al-Arab. All of the young men were factory workers, living in that cut-off area, with its special nature. It’s a working-class neighbourhood, but quiet, and the Nubaria Canal runs along its edge. It has two factories that are linked to the lives of most of the residents. The project grew from the integration of all this, and I used the characters of the young men as a source of inspiration to create the friends of Hossam, the hero of the film.
Were you actually able to shoot in that area?
Unfortunately, no. I tried to shoot there, but during the previews, we had some problems which made us decide to change locations. I finally chose another area of Alexandria, Kilo 21, which I realised met all the visual requirements I needed for the film. Another element is that it’s surrounded by remote areas that are home to some criminals, which is an important element in the story.
But aren’t Nagaa Al-Arab and Kilo 21 both different from the “colony” mentioned in the film’s title?
There is actually a third industrial area called The Settlement, on the outskirts of Alexandria, very close to Kilo 21. I found the name inspiring, as it most likely came from the fact that it was an ancient colony for lepers, which was built to isolate the sick from the world and avoid spreading the infection. I felt that this had similarities with the idea of cutting people off in an isolated industrial area with its own internal legal and moral system, so I chose the name as the title for the project, and continued with it until the film was completed.
Choosing the main actors is one of the most important choices in filmmaking. How did you find your actors, especially as both of them are non-professionals?
I had been Facebook friends for a while with Adham Shoukry, who played the role of Hossam, but we had no real relationship. When I first had the idea for the film, I thought his face was a perfect fit for Hossam’s character, with his clear features and prominent facial bones. When I started putting together a proposal for the film to submit to potential donors, I asked for his permission to use his picture as a visual reference for how the hero of the story could look.
But when we started the audition process to select the actors, he didn’t show up on the appointed date. I chose other actors, then I called him and asked him, and he said he would like to meet me to meet him and join them. So I was now working with three actors, all for the role of Hossam, and each of them knew that there were two other candidates for the role. We worked through a month of rehearsals, until I decided that my initial feeling was correct, and that Adham was the most suitable for the role.
Choosing an actor for the role of Maro was more difficult. Finding an untrained child to play a dramatic role is really complicated. We put out two casting calls, asked acquaintances, and even visited foster homes. We met more than a hundred children, until one of the actors nominated his neighbour, Ziad Islam. I immediately realised that he was right for the role. I found him to be a very intelligent child and a remarkably quick learner. It was fun working with him.
Why did it take more than five years to make the film?
Basically because of the funding. No producers were keen to invest their money in a film like this, especially as it was an expensive film to make, requiring filming inside a factory for two whole weeks. The alternative was to shuttle between funding agencies and donors to gather the full budget.
Of course, taking your time is useful, on a human level. Five years is a long period, over which your character and your vision of things develop and gain more depth. On the other hand, the more time passes, the more opinions you hear, some of which distort your vision of the film. So a long production period is both positive and negative, but now I wish it had been possible to complete the film more quickly.
The footage from inside the factory is gripping, especially since we feel that Hossam’s character crystallizes through his relationship with the machine that killed his father, and how he trains on it.
As I said, I have this obsession with industry, and I needed to show how Hossam’s relationship developed with the machine, which would be tied with his fate. By the way, most of the extras who appear at the factory are real workers, some of them from that factory, and other workers from other factories, who we gave some training in acting. The goal was to see them move and interact with the machines naturally, with a bit of acting, which we had taught them. At the same time, they trained Adham on the machine. It was like a complete circle, in which each party taught the other what it lacked.
The Settlement is the first Arab film to take part in the newly established Perspectives competition at the Berlinale. How do you see this participation?
I wasn’t aware that it was a first until editor Heba Osman told me what it meant that it had been selected. From the beginning, I felt that the Berlinale was the right festival for my film, especially as some of my favourite, classic Egyptian films featured there, like Youssef Chahine’s “Cairo Station” and “Alexandria… Why?”, as well as “The Nightingale’s Prayer” by Henry Barakat. It’s amazing to be chosen by the same festival that chose great films like these, but I still wonder whether The Settlement will live on in people’s memories like those masterpieces. I really hope it can.
Goethe Insitut sponsored Mohamed Rashad to attend the Berlinale.
February 2025