Omar El Zohairy’s dark, absurd and sharply observed family fable has picked up awards galore at festivals worldwide – and it’s now screening only at the ICA Cinema as part of Summer Exclusives.

A family home, somewhere in Egypt. A mother (Demyana Nassar) dedicates her life to caring for her two children, running her household and following instructions barked by her authoritarian husband (Samy Bassiouny). But their lives are turned upside down at her son’s fourth birthday party, when a magician manages to turn her husband into a chicken. 

The first Egyptian film to be screened in the International Critics’ Week at Cannes, El Zohairy’s debut brilliantly explores and antagonises patriarchal mores in Egyptian society, playing with the dynamic between domination and submission as embodied by a wife, a woman who transgresses the boundaries placed on her by her society and by the viewer themselves.