Shall I Compare you to a Summer’s Day – 2022
(Bashtaalak sa’at)
A glance leads to a smile, a smile to a rendezvous: every love story begins the same way. These narratives are stored in songs and poems and live on beyond their inevitable endings, as Shakespeare’s titular sonnet 18 also suggests. In Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s metafictional essay, a female narrator who wishes to tell the story of a love between two men encounters a polyamorous chorus of lovers, and this oft-told tale is multiplied. In Club Scheherazade, there is no protagonist, and every song has various versions. Heteronormative dramaturgy is challenged polyphonically and across a range of media: lovers ask each other about threesomes, Grindr contacts and past dates. Pop clichés are twisted, heartache permeates the men’s singing, and poems by Wadih Saadeh are read out while a lover’s dirty laundry is aired. The narrator mischievously tries for a happy ending as her characters exit the story. “If pain could be forgotten through words,” we hear at one point, “no lover would ever have to walk away wounded.”
Trailer
Cast
Donia Massoud
Ahmed El Gendy
Nadim Bahsoun
Hassan Dib
Ahmed Awadalla
Richard Gabriel Gersch
Richard Gabriel
Kenton Türk
Gabriele Marra
Erik Cataldo
Agatino Camarda
Carlos Vasquez
Ronni Maciel
Sergio Guerra Abril
Albert Janzen
Daniel Townsend
Amr Karkout
Eyad Houssami
Rashid Owoyele
Gallery
Creative
| Written and Directed by | Mohammad Shawky Hassan |
| Cinematography | Carlos Vasquez |
| Editing | Carine Doumit |
| Music | Amen Feizabadi |
| Sound Design | Kinda Hassan (Sound Design & Electroacoustic Composition) |
| Sound | Tsvetelina Valkova |
| Production Design | Veronica Wüst |
| Costumes | Veronica Wüst |
| Make-Up | Nuria de Lario |
| Assistant Director | Alaa Abdullatif |
| Line Producer | Dilara Çatak |
| Producers | Mohammad Shawky Hassan, Maximilian Haslberger, Hesham Marold |
| Associate Producers | Karim Marold, Balthasar Busmann |
Streaming
Currently you are able to watch “Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day?” streaming on Dekkoo. As of 21/01/2023 subject to change
Shall I Compare you to a Summer’s Day – 2022
Bashtaalak sa’at – 2022
Shall I Compare you to a Summer’s Day – 2022, Shall I Compare you to a Summer’s Day, Bashtaalak sa’at, gay love story, Gay Movies, Gay Cinema, Queer Movies, Gaymen, gay love, gay stories, Donia Massoud, Ahmed El Gendy, Nadim Bahsoun, Hassan Dib, Ahmed Awadalla, Richard Gabriel Gersch, Richard Gabriel, Kenton Türk, Gabriele Marra, Erik Cataldo, Agatino Camarda, Carlos Vasquez, Ronni Maciel, Sergio Guerra Abril
