It would be easy to mistake the opening scene in “Happy Birthday” for a friendly sleepover when Toha (Doha Ramadan) and Nelly (Khadija Ahmed) wake up in the morning, nearly lost in the shuffle of white sheets in a plush bed. The young girls are full of excitement when it’s Nelly’s birthday, an occasion that her mother Laila (Nelly Karim) would prefer to celebrate another time, not out of neglect but the fact that they’re about to move out of the home they’ve shared as a family for years when a divorce is on the horizon and to throw a party would mean unpacking more than just the boxes stacked in their living room. Still, it’s only a matter of time before cake pops are ordered and a magician is sought out when Laila can’t look her daughter in the eye and ask for a delay when both girls’ imaginations run wild with the possibilities. However, in Sarah Goher’s gripping debut drama, it is the every day reality of Toha and Nelly’s friendship that becomes unimaginable when as the festivities take shape, Toha isn’t allowed to participate when she’s revealed to be a maid in the house well before an age when anyone should have to work.
Although Goher presents their home of Cairo as modern as anywhere else in the world as Laila takes the girls to a mall to shop, sets up a visit to the Museum of Illusions and routinely checks her Instagram, the director observes that both attitudes and traditions bred by a class system that dates back centuries remain all but impossible to break. While Nelly can spend the day carefree awaiting her presents, Toha tends to chores required by Nelly’s elderly grandmother and eventually has to find her way back home down by the Nile where her mother makes her own living by fishing and any money collected by the family is combined to keep their fragile existence afloat. The pugnacious Toha never invites pity, but she clearly is at the mercy of a society like so many others internationally where there is little regard for the poor and while Nelly sees her as an equal as a child, it appears as if there’s no way any adults will ever be able to help but look down on her because of the circumstances she was born into.
Goher, who gained plenty of experience as a producer on her husband Mohamed Diab’s projects that have run the gamut from the Venice Film Fest winner “Amira” to directing episodes of the Marvel series “Moon Knight” as she plotted to helm a feature of her own, makes a remarkable debut feature, not only overseeing a magnetic performance from her eight-year-old star Ramadan but giving the story the feeling of a real epic as it glides through the metropolis Toha has to navigate, unafraid of what she can’t know yet at the same time as there’s plenty of potential peril around her. After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year where it was the winner of three prizes and collecting many more on the festival circuit with stops at Mill Valley and El Gouna yielding Audience Awards, “Happy Birthday” is now up for an Oscar after Egypt made the film its official selection for Best International Feature and the director generously took the time to talk about making a film that retained the innocence of its main subject while depicting with such a heartbreaking practice, the personal inspiration for the story and how the film has connected with audiences.
How did this all come about?
I grew up in New York City and my parents are Egyptian immigrants, so I’d spend my summers visiting with my grandma’s apartment with my mom in Cairo and the only kid my age in her apartment was this little girl Sahar, who didn’t speak any English. I spoke really bad Arabic, and I thought she was extended family from my grandma’s village, but I discovered later on that she was actually her maid. Of course, this was something strange for me as someone who grew up in New York and it just didn’t make sense. Even when I tried to confront my grandma about it, my grandma would [say], “Why are you making this into such a big deal? I got married at 14 and had a child when I was 15. I was a kid. If anything, I’m actually doing something positive. If I didn’t take her into my house, she would have been in a worse situation.”
When Mohammed and I started writing the script, his brother and sister had simultaneously written this short film about a maid at a birthday party and it just seemed like the right capsule in terms of structure story-wise to kind of say a lot of things that I wanted to say in this film. So it’s really inspired by both Sahar, the girl who was my grandma’s maid, and this short story.
You structure the film where you really understand the context of Toha’s situation by continually pulling back so an audience’s consciousness almost mirrors hers as far as constantly learning something new. Was that difficult to figure out?
I knew I wanted to tell it from the child’s perspective because I thought that was the most interesting perspective. In my relationship with Sahar, I had not realized her status because nobody says or talks about it openly, and my presence became her exit strategy out of that miserable obligations that she had towards my grandma. She found me as a way to experience her childhood, so children are constantly looking for opportunities to be children and I wanted to really focus on the emotional aspect of what’s happening to kids in these situations.
I also did not at all want to give you a buffet of society’s problems and hardships because at the end of the day, I really wanted you to focus on the emotional aspects [of Toha’s experience] because I feel like that’s the most human aspect. The other thing is the people who need to hear this message, I need them to sit through a film like this and I always say I could have made a version of this film when I first graduated NYU film that could have been a little bit cliche, just focusing on the hardships because it’s a great drama, but I don’t think that’s the right version. I also had a child actor who comes from a similar socioeconomic world, and I had to wonder was I trying to project a very specific aspect or vision of poverty and hardship that she did not feel was real to her?
I also wanted to make a film that I felt I could share with my kids so that they could learn from this. Sometimes people get caught up in making films for festivals that hit on very [serious topics]. I felt like I wanted to make a film that was a lot more true to me and a lot more respectful of this child and a lot more productive in terms of what it can do to make a difference for people who don’t see that this is a problem.
From what I understand, you created this extremely sensitive process for bringing Doha into the production. What was it like getting to know her and getting her involved?
I spent a year training the kids, not just training [them for physically demanding scenes] swimming in the Nile, but acting and dancing, and a lot of it was just trying to become closer to her and prepare her. First of all, she didn’t know how to read and she had to understand every single scene in the film, so we worked on her character’s backstory and there was a lot of really deep acting work that was happening. Aside from that, we’d go on field trips where I’d just bring in the kids for chemistry to play and I felt that when the actors knew their character, especially Doha, the more they could become my northern star in terms of the performance. They’re such wonderful and smart kids, they’d [feel comfortable enough to say] “Okay, Sarah, can I tell you something?” I was very happy that they trusted me and found themselves a collaborative partner in the in the process. On a human level, I also wanted Doha to be a part of the creation of the character so she could distinguish her character in the film and herself and when she’s a part of the creative process, then it becomes a lot clearer for a child that this is something that is not real. That was important to me, just on a psychological level for her.
There’s a lot of long tracking shots on this that beyond typically needing the actors to hit their marks quite specifically are very unusual for a more intimate drama like this. Was your work on an action series like “Moon Knight” informative as to how incorporate that style on a film like this?
I don’t think it’s not so much “Moon Knight” helped me as much as motherhood. [laughs] Having two children, it really put a lot of things in check in my mind in terms of how to deal with children. The first thing they tell you at film school is that the hardest subjects to deal with are animals and children, but if you prepare children well, [it isn’t]. I was like a kindergarten teacher and everyone thinks a director is supposed to be [aggressive], but I was a bit soft-spoken. Sometimes we’d like have dances and people around me on set would be like, “What is going on?” But that’s what was necessary. What was most important to me was if I have the kids ready, I could do a lot more, especially that last shot. We did that shot once. But the more that you prepare kids for anything in life, whether it’s for their role in this film or for whatever is to come, the more likely they will reach their maximum capabilities. And I felt that’s what happened and what allowed me to a lot of those long shots.
How did you want to present Egypt? At once you’re dealing with this practice of child labor and poverty but showing a place where there’s modernity for those that can afford it.
It’s funny because when we did “Moon Knight,” there were people on Twitter who were like, “I didn’t know they had electricity in Egypt.” And I get it. There are people who watch the film [from abroad] and there are these Gregorian-style houses with white picket fences and I don’t want to single out Egypt because I’ve had audiences who’ve told me, “This is what it’s like in Honduras. This is what it’s like in Pakistan.” I was just in Spain and I was surprised when the person introducing [the screening said], “Yeah, not long ago, we used to have child labor. So it’s not strictly Egypt, but class is a very universal thing and the juxtaposition of these two very close, interdependent worlds and the very ironic challenges they present to the people who move in them and between them.
I wanted to make it as close as possible to what I see here, these bubble communities and I think I even simplified it. When you go into a gated community, you need a QR code and there’s a very clear barrier to entry, both economic and social, regardless of if it’s a child or an adult and these kids end up existing in this limbo. Why? Child labor is illegal in Egypt. But [there are people] like my grandmother who thought she was doing something benevolent in the sense that, “Oh, she’s just here. I’m not making her do any heavy lifting.” But the child ends up being in this space that is unsustainable. Once they grow out of their cuteness, what happens? The family will be like, “Okay, we’ll take the child from early on” and obviously they’re not paying out as much they would pay an adult domestic worker. But they [think], “Okay, I’m going to raise her. I’m going to teach her how to read. I’m going to build her dowry and I’m going to help marry her off.” This is like when a corporation gives you a scholarship and then you have to work for them for like 10 years. But does it work out? Maybe in some instances, this is the best alternative of all the options on the table for someone in this position. But, even if you’re not necessarily doing something that seems like it’s outright wrong, there is damage because essentially [this child is] in limbo. She’s not part of this world.
When it’s your feature directorial debut, what has this been like to get this out into the world?
I’ll say insane because honestly, I didn’t think we were going to get anything at Tribeca. I left before the awards and I was really apprehensive about showing the film to the Egyptian audience. When we premiered at El Gouna and we got the Audience Award and we were the the second film in the history of the festival to sell out so quickly. They had to add a third screening. So there is something in the approach that has allowed for a lot of people to relate to this film and be touched. I did not expect any of this.
There’s a great space that this film has started to explore. I think it’s a sweet spot [where] we don’t necessarily have to be making films coming from this part of the world that are religiously abiding by certain tropes. And that’s important because life is changing. People’s tastes are changing. Even with streaming, what people are watching is changing and as a market regionally in the Middle East, there’s either super commercial films or art house films that don’t really get any exposure locally. And there’s all these great stories that just get lost if you don’t have the commercial elements, so I feel like we were very successful in that sense to prove that, hey, maybe things, maybe tides are turning.
“Happy Birthday” does not yet have U.S. distribution.