In Omar Elhanbouly’s short film Eyelashes, Elhanbouly plays Mohammad, a 27-year-old Egyptian who immigrates to London. The transition turns out to be problematic with two things pulling at him at once. One is the dream of becoming an actor, and the other is staying true to his culture and identity.
After a job that required him to wear a pig suit, Mohammad prays by the River Thames. Realizing he’s late, Mohammad rushes across the city to an audition when his agent, David (Robert Firth), has a last-minute opportunity for him to scratch the itch of acting. The problem is that the job conflicts with Mohammad’s faith as a Muslim. David pushes, Mohammad hesitates, and eventually a compromise is reached — Mohammad agrees to shave his beard and take the job. It’s a small sacrifice, or so he tells himself.
Mohammad shows up ready to work. What he finds when he gets there, though, is nothing close to what David described. Waiting for him is Paco (Miguel Angel Plaza), and the gig turns out to be far more humiliating than Mohammad could have anticipated.
“…Mohammad agrees to shave his beard and take the job.”
Eyelashes draws directly from writer-director Omar Elhanbouly’s own life. He moved from Cairo to London in 2021. Growing up in Cairo, Elhanbouly found that religion shapes everything. London is the opposite. For Elhanbouly, the collision of those two worlds is the heart of the film, and he wanted to put Arab immigrants on screen in a way he rarely sees in UK film or television.
In a true indie filmmaking spirit, Elhanbouly wore every hat in this production. He wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the film. Shot in the Cinéma Vérité style with cinematographers Ziad Abdelbasit and Caleb Seed, the camera stays close to Mohammad to make the film feel personal to Elhanbouly. It succeeds by making Eyelashes feel more authentic than scripted.
I’m as far away from being Muslim as you can imagine, and Eyelashes is another amazing film in a long line of films I’ve seen that gives me a glimpse into what it feels like to be dropped into a Western world with Eastern values. The beauty of the film is that Elhanbouly shows the struggle without judgment, while zeroing in on the compromises he must make to succeed in the ruthless game of entertainment.
"…what it feels like to be dropped into a Western world with Eastern values."
