A Short Ride

In post-revolutionary Cairo in 2011, amid unrest and lawlessness, Kamal, a privileged college student, is kidnapped by his father’s newly hired driver and an accomplice. What begins as a routine car ride quickly unravels into a badly planned abduction. Stripped of his money and phone, Kamal is dragged through a chaotic day with two heroin addicts as they score drugs, share meals, and drift between Cairo and rural Egypt while waiting for a ransom to be paid. As police pressure mounts and tensions between the kidnappers escalate, the driver’s pregnant wife is drawn into the ordeal. A darkly comic story of shifting loyalties and uneasy bonds, set against the absurd chaos of a society in flux.