Institute For Middle East Studies

Cairo, Egypt. 20 million people. 23,600 miles of road. Two million cars. Taxis, buses, donkey carts, and swarms of people, all jockeying to move through the obstacle course that is their daily lives. Sitting at a cultural intersection, Cairo is a city unlike any other, where different faiths, races, and social classes all share a few clogged arteries of tarmac. “Cairo Drive” is a documentary that explores the life of one of the world’s most populated cities—from its streets. For his third documentary, Egyptian/American filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha rides through the congested streets alongside a diverse cast of characters—from taxi drivers to ambulances, from traffic cops to private citizens—capturing the unspoken codes of conduct, frustrations, humor, fatalism, and life-or-death decisions of driving in a city where the only rule is: there are no rules.