Cairo Time
Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), a magazine editor, travels to Cairo to meet her husband, Mark (Tom McCamus), a UN official working in Gaza, for a three week vacation.
When he is unavoidably delayed, he sends his friend Tareq (Alexander Siddig), who had been his security officer for many years, to escort her throughout the beautiful and exotic city. The last thing anyone expects is that they will fall in love.
Cairo Time is a love letter to a city intertwined with a love story about a woman. It began when Syrian-Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda first visited Cairo with her family many years ago.
Returning a decade ago with one of her sisters, (and no longer under the protective eye of her father) they had memorable
Juliette is a woman who married young and still ardently loves her husband, Mark, who works abroad.
Their children have grown up and moved away. Life, doing what it usually does to a marriage, has replaced their hopes and dreams with accomplishment and responsibilities. In the back of her head, Juliette had thought that sooner or later, she and her husband would have time for each other, which was the reason for her trip to Cairo.
Unable to meet Juliette when she lands, but knowing that she is an independent woman who is likely to head off on her own, Mark asks Tareq to care for her. For years, Mark had trusted Tareq with his own life, so it made sense to extend that trust to Juliette’s wellbeing.
Once at the hotel, Juliette is alone again. Unwilling to wait quietly for her husband’s arrival, every effort she makes to venture out on her own is rebuffed. Cairo is not a gentle city.
With a population of 17 million, the noise is unbearable. The heat, mixed with dust, is oppressive. Traffic does not adhere to lanes or stop lights. And women, particularly foreigners, do not easily move about in public alone. Q
uickly, Juliette learns that the simple activities of everyday living in Canada, like walking across the street, become a test of wills in Cairo. And so she turns to Tareq who shows her first, Cairo, and then herself.
Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Alexander Siddig, Elena Anaya, Tom McCamus