Saleh Abu Saada (Hesham Maged) is a failed architect fired from his firm by his boss, Zakaria (Bayoumi Fouad), due to his terrible architectural designs. Even when building his own house, he placed a concrete pillar where the door should be, forcing entry and exit through the window. He leads a routine life in a working-class neighborhood, constantly quarreling with his equally unsuccessful wife, Dorreya El-Sayed Ahmed (Hannah El-Zahed), and their academically struggling young son, Boudi (Jean Ramez), who frequently causes trouble at school. Saleh discovers a time rift in the junk room of his house that transports him to a parallel world, where he sees alternate versions of himself, his wife Dorreya, and his son Boudi. However, they are exact opposites: the husband is a highly successful architect, and his wife Dorreya is a successful television presenter—a beautiful, gentle blonde with a soft voice who never argues or stirs up trouble—while their son Boudi excels in school and is extremely well-mannered. When Saleh feels he is about to be discovered, he returns to his real world. Perplexed over whether to settle in the parallel world or stay in reality, Saleh consults his cousin Kamal (Mohamed Tharwat), a security guard at a contracting company, pretending he is writing a novel about a parallel universe. Kamal advises him to go back and forth to the new world, and if he likes it, to settle there permanently. Saleh begins shuttling between both worlds, partly to snoop and partly to escape his reality, especially after learning that the parallel Saleh is away on a ten-day mission to save a sad whale. The wife and son assume he cut his trip short because he found the whale's condition had improved. He spends several days with Dorreya and Boudi in Disneyland-like theme parks and notices that they are vegetarians and that an authority monitors them electronically: whenever someone loses their temper and raises their voice, a squad of men appears and tasers them until they calm down. Furthermore, they all dread going to the Garden, regarding it as a horrific detention camp. He also discovers that his boss, Zakaria, works as his secretary in this parallel universe. When he learns the date of architect Saleh's return, he decides to swap places with him. He meets his cousin Kamal and tells him that architect Saleh is taking a new drug called Wezo, so if he notices any change in his behavior and appearance or hears him saying strange things about a sad whale and the Garden, it is just the drug's effect. Saleh then strikes the architect on the head and transports him through the rift to his real world with Dorreya, while he moves permanently to the parallel world to live his best days—or so he thinks—with the blonde Dorreya. When he confides to her his desire to have another baby to give Boudi a sibling, Dorreya welcomes the suggestion with immense joy and tells him that starting tomorrow, she will book an appointment at the Authority of Delicious Moments, where they leave their samples and return nine months later to pick up the baby—meaning intimacy is purely verbal. That was not what Saleh had in mind, as he only wanted a child for the sake of the act itself, and strangely enough, Dorreya does not even know what a kiss is. On the other hand, the polite architect Saleh endures a bizarre life in a strange home with his wife Dorreya, whose hair color has changed and whose polite demeanor has drastically worsened, alongside his son Boudi and even the people on the street whose behavior has deteriorated. Dorreya grows uneasy with her husband's behavior, suspecting he is talking about another woman he married. However, Kamal informs her about the drugs. Since Saleh spends long hours in the junk room, Dorreya enters it and discovers the time rift, crossing over into the parallel world. She finds her alternate self with her husband Saleh, strikes the doppelgänger on the head, and transports her to the real world with her young son beside her polite husband. Dorreya then takes her son Boudi and crosses into the parallel world after dyeing her hair yellow to live with her husband Saleh. However, Dorreya's ill-mannered behavior exposes her to Saleh, reigniting their arguments. She taunts him that his mother's name is Shehata and raises her voice, prompting the noise-control agents to burst in and taser her. The couple then agrees on a truce to enjoy happiness in the parallel world. Meanwhile, Kamal intervenes on behalf of the polite Saleh, helping him get re-employed by Zakaria, and he succeeds in his new job, while Dorreya also excels in her media career. When they watch Abdel Halim Hafez kissing Nadia Lutfi on television in the film Al-Khataya, they try kissing, which leads to physical intimacy, and they realize they were deluded in their other world. When Boudi commits a grave error in the parallel world, the senior official Kamal (Mohamed Tharwat) decides to banish him to the Garden to turn him into a guava tree. Despite painstaking pleas from Dorreya and Saleh to pardon their son, he is transformed into a guava tree. When the parents learn that everything returns to its original state once they go back to the real world, they decide to sacrifice their happiness to save their son Boudi and resolve to steal the guava tree. Since the Garden's gates only open via Kamal's facial recognition, they return to the real world and bring back cousin Kamal, who opens the Garden gates, enabling them to retrieve the guava tree. Saleh and Dorreya transport the tree to their real world while parallel-world Kamal chases them, whereas cousin Kamal fails to pass through the wall. All the characters gather in Saleh's strange apartment along with parallel-world Kamal, who takes charge of buying household groceries, especially the plants they eat. Strangely, the time rift in the junk room is then breached by two doppelgängers of Saleh and Dorreya—this time as Mongols, followers of the Tatars. (A Break of Delicious Moments)
Tuesday, 10 November 2026
