Of all the films seen so far at this year’s WOW film festival, Mohamed Diab’s Clash is far and above the best I’ve seen. More than that, the director’s thrilling, edge-of-your-seat drama is one of the best films of the year so far.
Featuring a high-concept idea that is perfectly executed for the big-screen, the drama takes place solely in the back of a police truck, where a number of different people from different backgrounds are brought together during the Egyptian protests in 2013.
Inspired by a true story in which 37 people were killed in the back of one of these vehicles, something which is referenced at one point in the film, it cleverly manages to take the central conflict between those who support the military and those who support the Muslim Brotherhood, and put it all into the context of a terrifically tense blockbuster.
In a sense, it plays out like a disaster movie, introducing us to the various characters and their motivations at the very beginning, who we know are going to have to come together at some point to survive. However, these aren’t caricatures or clichéd in the slightest, but rather feel like fully fleshed out, real people, who, as we get to know them over the course of the film, we really begin to feel for regardless of their politics.
This fact is important and integral to the film’s success, as the script from Mohamed and his brother Khaled manages to constantly raise the stakes in spite of being set solely within four walls. Due to the limitations of the concept, they know that the best way to make it as much of a nerve-wracking and exciting experience as possible is to make you invest in and care for the people on screen.
It works. As the group find themselves driven from one sticky situation into the next, powerless to really do anything from their cage, the stakes are considerably raised. You want these people to survive and remain unharmed, even though you know the chances are that can’t happen, which makes for such compelling cinema.
Taken from a purely filmic level, Clash is a claustrophobic thriller that the best writers in Hollywood would envy. But at the same time, there’s so much going on within the drama, so many metaphors about humanity and the current political state in Egypt that it is a much fuller experience than you might initially think.
The most obvious metaphor is, of course, the truck itself; an enclosed four walls with bars on the window that represents the oppression of the ongoing situation in Egypt. From minute one of Clash, we never leave the space, and as things escalate it only appears to become smaller and smaller in size. Other examples are an ongoing game of noughts and crosses, representative of the ongoing struggle between the two factions, and an ambiguous finale in which the characters are unsure as to which protest they are being taken to – at one point going so far as to yell “Where are we going?”, which is perhaps the central question of the piece.
Through all of this though, the filmmakers always try to remain as unbiased as possible and manage to present both sides of the argument, never leaning toward one particular way as the correct one. What they seem far more interested in instead, is exploring the idea that, despite our beliefs or backgrounds, we are all inherently bound by our humanity.
To see opposites come together to help provide water and relief to each other, our very basic human needs, is humbling and certainly the biggest thing I will personally take away from this exceptional bit of filmmaking. It’s warm, cold, terrifying, moving, exciting and political. I can’t ask for more than that in a movie, and am already dying to see it again already. Go see it as soon as you can.
WOW Film Festival opens at Chapter cinema in Cardiff on Friday 17 March before heading to Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Small World Theatre Cardigan, Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea, and Theatr Clwyd in Mold. See www.wowfilmfestival.com for full details.
words JOE RICHARDS