I Don't Care if the World Collapses
2024 · 20m · Egypt
Directed by Karim Shaaban
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic, provocative, tense
A career-driven line producer on a one-day commercial shoot faces an impossible dilemma when the lead actor receives devastating news about the death of his lifelong friend and wants to leave the set, forcing her to choose between professional responsibility and human compassion.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Line-producer trapped between a grieving actor and the commercial shoot from hell — that's a great pressure-cooker premise and 684K YouTube views means Egyptian cinema circles already know. Whiplash/Uncut Gems comp suggests it actually moves.
Shaaban's Egyptian commercial-shoot moral pressure-cooker, drawn from his real loss, sits in the Asghar Farhadi register of impossible-choice cinema. 684K YouTube views confirm regional resonance and craft.
684K views and 19K likes on YouTube for 20 minutes — that's a massive engagement ratio for an Egyptian workplace-moral-dilemma piece, and Shaaban drawing from his real experience of losing a loved one mid-commercial-shoot gives it lived authority. Trapping the protagonist where every choice causes harm is the right dramatic engine.
Reviews
Karim Shaaban's Egyptian Short Film Is A Masterpiece — this twenty-minute short has managed to do something that many feature-length films often struggle to pull off.
Shaaban plunges his protagonist into an impossible situation, forcing her to choose between her professional responsibilities and her personal compassion — a decision that could haunt her.
Festivals
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2024
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024
- Nashville Film Festival 2024