Set against the magnificent backdrop of the ancient village of Karnak, a train of tragic and bewildering events disrupts the lives of four generations of women. In this daring and powerful film (based on a well-known novel), Khairy Bishara examines, through the rituals of birth, marriage, and death during the decades preceding the 1952 revolution, the hold of myths and tradition on an Upper Egyptian village. Hazina, wife of an invalid and mother of an absent son (working in Sudan), struggles hard to ensure her daughter's happiness, even if she has to resort to magic to unbind 'the spell' of her daughter's marriage to an impotent blacksmith. But all courageous and individual attempts seem to be wasted against the bonds of tradition, poverty, and paucity of choice (that exist) despite an abundance of sensuality and life. The overriding metaphors of Bishara's beautiful film are impotence and absence-perhaps today's most poignant Arab concerns?-Rose Issa, London Film Festival '87