Sheikh Jackson

An oddball winner, Sheikh Jackson was Egypt’s official entry in this year’s Academy Awards’ foreign film category. Set in 2009, filmmaker Amr Salama’s eccentric gem centers on a joyless, strict Muslim cleric named Sheikh Khaled Hani (Ahmad El-Fishawi), who sleeps under his bed (as a reminder that death can happen at any time) and condemns the Beyonce videos his young daughter watches, but has a reckoning after the news of Michael Jackson’s death. It seems that years before Hani turned into a pillar of conservative religious values (he demands that his wife be fully covered when she’s outside), he found personal liberation in the 1980s as a major fan of Jackson’s, even wearing his hair and dressing like the late King of Pop. Hani’s Jackson obsession during adolescence also drew him to a girl who still haunts him decades later, and it spurred the cruelty of his father after Hani’s mother died. Jackson’s death brings to the fore several unresolved experiences of pain and loss, after which Hani begins to ease up on his tightly-wound demeanor and lose some certainty in doctrinal faith. A female therapist (who refuses to wear a scarf) enters the picture, but the most interesting evidence of Hani’s crisis is in a dream that recreates one of Jackson’s iconic music videos. The tonal mix here can be uneven (intense drama, extreme goofiness), but this is ultimately an engaging character study. Recommended. (T. Keogh)