I am sure I am not the only one, in these pandemic locked-down times, who misses traveling. I firmly think each time we travel, to a different place we know a little more about ourselves, and in escape we have time to explore our past, and deal with our today (and our tomorrow better) Zeina Durra’s ‘Luxor’ captures a lot of that experience, and for 85 minutes, I felt transported to a being I have been searching for lately.

The film is about Hana (Andrea Riseborough) a woman just coming from war torn Jordan and goes to Luxor to escape. Or maybe to capture what she once cherished – sometimes it’s the same thing> She checks in at The Windsor Palace, and walks aimlessly around the city.

And then she meets Sultan (Karim Saleh) a past love. When they finally meet by chance, Hana is flustered, which makes you think she has been waiting for the reunion to happen (I bet she situated herself into situation and places where it would happen most) And as the two of them walk around the city, we see them falling into what they once were, as Hana had hoped. There’s a contemplative texture to their encounters, as they get deeper and deeper into each other as the days go on. There are two significant scenes that stood out for me – when they meet another woman, perhaps an ex lover of his, and her transparency/jealousy showed. Another is when everything culminated in her feelings and she does an awkward interpretative dance at a hotel bar. That scene is so raw and hard to watch only the bravest of brave actresses can pull that off (and Riseborough does so marvelously)

I liked the film a lot. It made me think, and more importantly, it made me feel.