Bittersweet and achingly beautiful, Cairo Time is about a woman and a man who spend a few days together in a teeming city and find themselves, maybe, falling in love - an affair that's never consummated, or even acknowledged, except for the halting, yearning look in their eyes. In another place, another time, perhaps . . . or perhaps not. But a connection has been made, one that won't slip away.
Written and directed by the Syrian-Canadian filmmaker Ruba Nadda, Cairo Time moves unhurriedly through the arcades and boulevards of the clamorous Egyptian capital, where a magazine editor from New York, Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), has come to meet her husband, a U.N. official working in the Middle East. But a crisis in Gaza keeps Mark (Tom McCamus) from returning to Cairo for their appointed vacation; instead, he asks his former security officer, an Egyptian named Tareq (Alexander Siddig), to meet Juliette at the airport and make sure she finds her way to the hotel. The husband should be there in a day or two.
