MFW11 BEST ANIMATION SHORT
S The Wolf
[d] Sameh Alaa
France, Egypt / 2025 / Animation / 10:30
A man recounts his capillary peregrinations from adolescence until now.
“the way it connects the human body, time, identity and hair, reminded us of what it means to be human.”
[ig] @samehalaa__
Biography
Sameh Alaa is an Egyptian director, producer, and writer. His short films Fifteen and I’m Afraid to Forget Your Face gained international acclaim, with the latter winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes – the first Egyptian film to do so. Sameh has served as a jury member at festivals like Cannes and Cairo, while his films have screened at major film festivals worldwide, including Toronto, Locarno, and San Sebastián, and were showcased at MoMA and the Venice Biennale. He is currently developing his first feature and working on an animated short.
Filmography
- S The Wolf – 2025 – short film
- I am afraid to forget your face – 2020 – short film
- Fifteen – 2017 – short film
Director’s Statement
As a child, I had the same haircut as my father till as far as I can remember. Despite my tumultuous relationship with my father, I couldn’t avoid this. This film for me is perhaps a way of expressing the pressures that were put on the shoulders of a young man in the making, and how they shaped him. I think it’s finally time to have a good laugh and move on.
In this film, I take a very different angle from my previous projects. However, there is one thing in common between Fifteen, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face and S The Wolf, and that is my fascination with human vulnerability, how people deal with it and how it is perceived by their environment.
I won’t add anything new by saying that in an extremely patriarchal society, a young man who worries about his appearance is systematically put in a box; and that if this same young man questions his sexuality, it’s a safe bet that he’ll be mocked and marginalized. In societies where women’s bodies are politicized to the extreme, it seems to me that men’s bodies are too. I like dual characters; in other words, the characters that move me the most are men who are a little feminine, women who are a little masculine, characters who are neither completely submissive nor completely dominant. Here, animation will allow me to realize this in concrete terms: with an end image of a character who’s not entirely bald, but who’s also not entirely virile. He is not an adolescent anymore but also not entirely an adult as well. He is far from who I perceive myself to be, and yet still a core part of who I am.