1000 Mabrouk (Congratulations)

Ahmad Helmy is currently the smartest actor in Egypt.

Not only is he blessed with an unthinkable amount of growing talent; but his passion to be new in every choice always proves successful. With his new and surreal masterpiece, 1000 Mabrouk, it seems that Ahmad Helmy is raising the bar for other actors to reach and it is possibly the highest bar ever raised in the ten years I've been watching Arabic movies.

The plot is driven by a time loop: A man finds himself repeating the same day everyday; his wedding day and he dies in the end everytime. Yes, I know what pops up: Groundhog Day and it is quite similar to Groundhog Day except that Ahmad Helmy is a much better actor than Bill Murray on this one (with all do respect to Bill Murray) and 1000 Mabrouk has a much faster pace and a more drama inspired script than the romantic approach Groundhog Day took.

Stephen King once wrote a short story called That Feeling You Can Only Say What It Is In French. Of course, he meant deja vu. The idea was that hell, in its essence, is never really about the torture but about the repitition. This is what the hero of 1000 Mabrouk finds himself in; a constant loop of repetition or, as he puts it, 'Small circles inside big circles. The small circles can change, the big circles cannot'.

It would be a shame to ruin the movie but let me just say that it is, by all means, a true Ahmed Helmy masterpiece. Helmy is honing his acting skills with every new movie and he's a much better actor than I originally thought of him.

Fascinating, thought-provoking stuff and a 10/10 rating.