Film and Video Umbrella are thrilled to be partnering with Arnolfini throughout Spring and Summer 2026 to present FVU New Takes. Each month FVU New Takes will showcase a newly commissioned work in Arnolfini’s Dark Studio on Level 2.

About the work

Mahdy rummages through an old Quran cassette, searching for a lost poem once recited and recorded by a departed friend. As he rewinds the tape and unspools its memory, the poem dissolves into a litany, and remembrance becomes hallucination. The Wretched of the Clouds is an ongoing film project that attempts to resist the forgetfulness imposed by the current political discourse in post-revolution Cairo, by conjuring the sweat, weariness, and sickness of a discontinued time. The film is a prism that treats memory as an excavation, hoping to unearth fragments of a lost future entrapped in a repressed past.

--

The Wretched of the Clouds (2026) has been commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella as part of FVU New Takes. FVU New Takes is supported by Jerwood Foundation. Exhibition partner: Arnolfini, Bristol. FVU and Arnolfini are supported using public funding by Arts Council England.