DIRECTOR: Sarah Goher
STARRING: Doha Ramadan, Nelly Karim, Hanan Motawie, Hanan Youssef, Khadheeja Ahmed
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 31 minutes
LANGUAGE: Arabic
PLOT: Set against the backdrop of contemporary Cairo, this poignant debut feature follows eight-year-old maid Toha, who strives to give her best friend Nelly, a child of privilege, a memorable birthday, uncovering the quiet tensions of class and belonging.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Cairo, Egypt
To check out all previous submissions for Egypt, click HERE.
STARRING: Doha Ramadan, Nelly Karim, Hanan Motawie, Hanan Youssef, Khadheeja Ahmed
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 31 minutes
LANGUAGE: Arabic
PLOT: Set against the backdrop of contemporary Cairo, this poignant debut feature follows eight-year-old maid Toha, who strives to give her best friend Nelly, a child of privilege, a memorable birthday, uncovering the quiet tensions of class and belonging.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Cairo, Egypt
To check out all previous submissions for Egypt, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“No, I want to stay here with you forever."
In her deeply affecting debut feature, Egyptian filmmaker Sarah Goher crafts a quiet yet piercing meditation on childhood, class, and the fragile boundaries between affection and servitude. Happy Birthday follows Toha, an eight-year-old maid living with her employer’s family in Cairo during the unraveling of a marriage. As Laila’s divorce from her husband Asser looms, her mother moves in to help, bringing stability to a home marked by emotional tension. Within this household, Toha’s focus is heartbreakingly simple: her best friend Nelly, Laila’s daughter, is turning nine, and she must have a birthday party. For Toha, ensuring Nelly’s happiness feels like both duty and devotion, a chance to earn affection and make a wish of her own.
Doha Ramadan delivers a luminous first-time performance as Toha, grounding Goher’s story in a child’s unfiltered perception of inequality. Toha does not know her own birthday; her widowed mother, Nadia, works as a hand fisher on the Nile and is too burdened by survival to recall such milestones. For her, childhood is a luxury. Toha’s position as a domestic worker at eight years old seems unthinkable, yet in her world, it represents progress, a small escape from her mother’s grinding labor. The film’s attention to this generational cycle of sacrifice renders it both specific to Cairo and universally resonant.
What troubles Toha most is her uncertain place in Laila and Nelly’s lives. She is a servant, yet she shares Nelly’s laughter, secrets, and games. Goher’s camera, patient and intimate, moves with Toha, observing her attempts to reconcile love and labor, belonging and displacement. As the day of the party arrives, the fragile illusion of equality between the two girls begins to crumble, exposing a truth Toha is too young, and too wise, not to understand.
Happy Birthday is an astonishingly assured debut that captures the subtle violence of class through the eyes of innocence. Goher reveals how social hierarchies are absorbed in childhood, shaping who gets to dream and who must serve. By refusing sentimentality, she allows empathy to emerge from truth rather than pity. Toha’s journey becomes a mirror for a society where emotional warmth and exploitation intertwine so closely that they become indistinguishable. In the end, Happy Birthday is not just a story of one girl’s stolen childhood, it is a haunting reflection on the quiet endurance of those who love despite being unseen, and a reminder that tenderness can exist even within systems built to erase it.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“No, I want to stay here with you forever."
In her deeply affecting debut feature, Egyptian filmmaker Sarah Goher crafts a quiet yet piercing meditation on childhood, class, and the fragile boundaries between affection and servitude. Happy Birthday follows Toha, an eight-year-old maid living with her employer’s family in Cairo during the unraveling of a marriage. As Laila’s divorce from her husband Asser looms, her mother moves in to help, bringing stability to a home marked by emotional tension. Within this household, Toha’s focus is heartbreakingly simple: her best friend Nelly, Laila’s daughter, is turning nine, and she must have a birthday party. For Toha, ensuring Nelly’s happiness feels like both duty and devotion, a chance to earn affection and make a wish of her own.
Doha Ramadan delivers a luminous first-time performance as Toha, grounding Goher’s story in a child’s unfiltered perception of inequality. Toha does not know her own birthday; her widowed mother, Nadia, works as a hand fisher on the Nile and is too burdened by survival to recall such milestones. For her, childhood is a luxury. Toha’s position as a domestic worker at eight years old seems unthinkable, yet in her world, it represents progress, a small escape from her mother’s grinding labor. The film’s attention to this generational cycle of sacrifice renders it both specific to Cairo and universally resonant.
What troubles Toha most is her uncertain place in Laila and Nelly’s lives. She is a servant, yet she shares Nelly’s laughter, secrets, and games. Goher’s camera, patient and intimate, moves with Toha, observing her attempts to reconcile love and labor, belonging and displacement. As the day of the party arrives, the fragile illusion of equality between the two girls begins to crumble, exposing a truth Toha is too young, and too wise, not to understand.
Happy Birthday is an astonishingly assured debut that captures the subtle violence of class through the eyes of innocence. Goher reveals how social hierarchies are absorbed in childhood, shaping who gets to dream and who must serve. By refusing sentimentality, she allows empathy to emerge from truth rather than pity. Toha’s journey becomes a mirror for a society where emotional warmth and exploitation intertwine so closely that they become indistinguishable. In the end, Happy Birthday is not just a story of one girl’s stolen childhood, it is a haunting reflection on the quiet endurance of those who love despite being unseen, and a reminder that tenderness can exist even within systems built to erase it.
