A sharp Egyptian comedy that's worth your time and your money — and stays in your head long after you leave the cinema.
Some films teach you something. Some films make you laugh. And some — the rare ones — do both at once without you ever noticing the seams. The Bershama movie belongs to that third category.
The premise looks simple on the surface: a single Arabic-language exam day inside a high-school proctoring room. But from the moment the curtain rises, you find yourself inside a full-blown social theater. Everyone in that room has dragged their entire world in with them — their dreams, their fears, and the cheating tricks they've inherited from one generation to the next.
Director Khaled Diab picked a single place and a single day — a bold choice — and instead of scattering himself across countless storylines, he compressed everything inside those four walls. That pressure makes the characters both sharper and deeper at the same time. The mayor's failure of a son, the woman in her sixties chasing her pension, the dancer after a visa, and the criminal who's decided to "repent and get married" — each of them stands in for a real slice of Egyptian society.
Hesham Maged delivers a light, controlled performance, far removed from the shouting and overacting we sometimes get in Egyptian comedy. Bassem Samra — as usual — steals every scene he's in with an easy, natural presence. And Reham Abdelghafour proves that comedy needs intelligence, not just clowning.
What sets the film apart is that it isn't only situational comedy — beneath the surface runs a genuine social critique of education, of corruption, and of the idea that "success by any means" has become a culture rather than an exception. The laugh comes, and then you think.
Box Office
The numbers tell the story on their own — more than 200 million Egyptian pounds in Egypt, and around 600,000 tickets in Saudi Arabia. The audience voted with its wallet, and the verdict is clear.
Our Rating
AMDB rates the film 8.5/10.
