“Brilliantly bizarre … There’s a universal message here about the unseen hopes of workers in precarious jobs and a sharp indictment of how western tourism moulds foreign resort workers before abandoning them.”    Charlie Phillips, The Observer, on Dreamaway

Interweaving pure documentary with semi-scripted sequences, Johanna Domke and Marouan Omara’s Dreamaway follows the absurd days and fantastical nights of a group of young Egyptian workers lured from home by the promise of jobs and a freer lifestyle in Sharm El Sheikh, a popular resort town on the edge of the Red Sea. Recent terror attacks have driven the local tourism industry into the ground, yet its young workers ritualistically carry on with their jobs in the nearly deserted hotels, despite the lack of guests. Between work, they wander the empty environs dreaming of alternative lives. Preceded by CROP, Domke and Omara’s reflection on the power of images, set in the offices of Egypt’s state newspaper Al-Ahram and told from the perspective of a fictional photojournalist who missed the 2011 revolution due to a hospital stay.

CROPEgypt/​Germany 2013Johanna Domke, Marouan Omara49 min. DCP

DreamawayEgypt/​Germany 2018Johanna Domke, Marouan Omara86 min. DCP

Programmed by Michèle Smith

This DIM program was originally scheduled for October 2021, but was postponed due to technical issues beyond our control. We are pleased to offer this rescheduled presentation. DIM thanks the filmmakers for their patience.