Little Dreams (Ahlam Saghira)

Ghareeb, a 13-year-old Egyptian boy, follows his father's ghost to the front line. The film powerfully conveys a generation's disenchantment with the popular leader of the late 1960s, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Set in Suez, in the period leading up to and during the six-day war against Israel in 1967, the film is filled with captivating, dreamlike sequences that unfurl with vivid splashes of colour. The picture begins by recapping the protagonist's life -- from his parents' wedding, his birth and early childhood to his father's death as a Resistance hero in the 1956 Suez conflict. But soon, our protagonist's idealism is destroyed by the brutality of conflict, along with his home, town, and dreams for the future.