THE CLOSED DOORS

It's 1990, and as Operation Desert Storm fuels the whirlwind of rising Islamic fundamentalism in the Mideast, a disturbed high-school boy named Mohamad is feeling the pangs of sexual longing not only for other girls but in the Oedipal sense for his attractive, divorced mother Fatma, an abandoned housewifewho slaves as a maid to pay his tuition. Incensed with jealousy over Fatma's latest suitor, Mohamed easily falls under the spell of the fanatically religious Khalid, whose ministrations at first seem to help the broken family. But Khalid's benevolences is mixed with an insidious spiritual indoctrination into militant Islam. His newfound zealotry allows Mohamad to suppress his incestuous urges – paradoxically, by treating his mother more like a traditional bride. The son, scorning their “unclean” neighbors, orders Fatma to stay at home. He forces her to wear a veil. And he even dictatest the terms of her second, twisted marriage, to a “suitable” husband. THE CLOSED DOORS is a wrenching social drama from one of Arab cinema's most promising young filmmkaers, about the darker impulses, from control to lust, that cloak themselves in teh raiments of extremist religious belief. (In Arabic with English subtitles)