Deep within each of us lie private fears never voiced to others, yet they clearly manifest in our behavior. These fears often begin in childhood with the terror of the "mice room." Set in Alexandria, the film explores the fears of several separate characters. For instance, Mrs. Rawya (Hanan Youssef) loses her husband, Hussein, while he was asleep, leaving the widow stricken with insomnia. Terrified of dying in her sleep, she stays awake at night, fighting off slumber by washing her face with cold water, staring blankly out the window, drinking copious amounts of black coffee, and checking on her young adult son, Tarek (Tarek Mostafa), and daughter, Nada (Nada Riad), as they sleep, fearful that they might meet the same fate as their father. This frustrates her son, who has been unable to communicate with her since his father's passing because she sleeps during the day and stays up at night. Waking up one night, he finds her cooking the next day's meal at two in the morning, yet she cannot justify her new behavior to her children, clinging to the dream of a day without night. Meanwhile, an elderly man named Moussa (Kamal Ismail) steps out of his home in the morning wearing pajamas, hesitating to cross the Corniche road, seemingly terrified of traffic. He gazes intently across the road toward the sea as though dreading the unknown. He refuses the help of a newspaper vendor (Islam Kamal) to cross the street; touched by how long the old man has been standing, the vendor offers him a chair to rest on, but the old man pays him no mind. A young woman (Farida Reda) seated at an adjacent restaurant waiting for someone who never arrives spots him and steps outside to offer assistance, but he ignores her as well. She slips a hard-to-find chocolate biscuit bar into his breast pocket, yet he remains indifferent, standing there until night falls. Soon, a groom named Tarek (Omar El-Hamy) passes by, escorted by his celebrating friends on the way to his bride's home. Exhausted and hungry, the old man finally sits on the chair and eats the biscuit bar. Meanwhile, the bride Dalia (Nora Saafan) wakes up on the morning of her wedding to the sound of her father (Elie Riad) quarreling with her mother, Hala (Azza El-Sayed), over a trivial matter, triggering her dread of marriage. She heads to the beauty salon to have her hair and makeup done, her mind consumed with anxiety over the photographer and the florist. The beautician (Sahar Sabry) advises her to avoid fats to preserve her skin and recommends eating chicken rather than meat, but her friend (Heba Ayman) objects, arguing that the groom might prefer meat over chicken. When the groom arrives, her first question to him is whether he prefers chicken or meat, but he is distracted; she repeats the question, but he does not answer, heightening her fear of the unknown. Meanwhile, the young son, Amr (Zeyad Salem), who easily connects with strangers, gives a lift to a waitress (Rabab Salah) who missed her bus, driving her to Alexandria and conversing with her throughout the trip. However, he has failed to connect with his own father, a well-known journalist (Mostafa Darwish), likely due to the father's devotion to his work. Amr has always held out hope of bonding with him and expressing his true feelings, but now that doctors have determined the father's cancer is terminal—ruling out surgery, while anemia prevents chemotherapy—Amr is terrified, losing all hope of connecting with his father as the end draws near. Then there is the overweight soccer player (Michel Abu Zakham), who is bullied by his peers while playing soccer, prompting him to practice alone at night; yet he is still harassed by his peers, who arrive on their motorcycles to torment him. Meanwhile, Maha (Nehad Yehia) prepares to travel abroad, only to be caught off guard when her colleague (Ahmed El-Rafeiy) tells her that the journey will change her, without clarifying how. Her anxieties escalate when she encounters a former schoolmate, Alaa (Sarah Hatem), who fails to recognize her after returning from abroad. She asks another colleague (Manar Ammar), who returned from England after two years away, whether she had changed upon coming back; the woman denies it, adding that while people do change, they rarely realize it themselves. Maha's dread of traveling peaks when she imagines herself returning from abroad and passing herself on the street without recognizing who she is. Finally, a little girl (Malak Magdy) plays in front of her home with her young friend (Attia Hassan) and runs around the mosque where her mother (Nisreen Nour) teaches women the rules of Quranic recitation. As she wanders playfully around the mosque, she overhears talk of heaven and hell. Back home, she plays with the belongings of her grandmother (Nadia Abdel Salam), whose feet were amputated due to diabetic complications. The child worries: what if her grandmother's amputated feet went to hell, and if her grandmother enters paradise, she will have no feet? The little girl goes back outside to play hopscotch alone in front of the house, then looks for her young friend so they can spy on the women learning the art of Quranic recitation. ("The Mice Room")
- CategoriesDrama
