Sorry to Disturb

Sorry to Disturb (Arabic: اسف على الإزعاج, romanized: ʾāsifun ʿalā l-ʾizʿāji) is a 2008 Egyptian drama film directed by Khaled Marei. It stars Ahmed Helmi, Mahmoud Hemida, Menna Shalabi, and Dalal Abdel Aziz.

Hassan Salah El-Din (Ahmed Helmy) is a young aeronautical engineer living in Cairo with his mother Nawal (Dalal Abdel Aziz). He is withdrawn, socially isolated, and convinced that the people around him resent him for his intelligence. He has developed an energy-saving aviation project that he believes could save the Egyptian government millions of dollars, and has been sending letters to President Hosni Mubarak requesting support for its implementation. His letters go unanswered.

Hassan is compulsive about his work and routinely shows up to the office on his days off. When his manager reprimands him for ignoring a mandatory leave order, Hassan dismisses the warning entirely and continues reporting to work. He is eventually suspended. He responds to the suspension with indifference.

Against his mother's repeated objections, Hassan withdraws his savings and purchases a motorcycle, despite not knowing how to ride one. He has wanted one since childhood. His relationship with his mother is strained; she is anxious and controlling, and he increasingly avoids her company. He is instead close with his father Salah El-Din (Mahmoud Hemida), a retired pilot, who lives with them and whose advice and encouragement Hassan relies on for everything.

At a café, Hassan notices a young woman (Menna Shalabi) and becomes immediately infatuated. He engineers a meeting with her by claiming to be a friend of a man who had scammed her, and that he has been sent to return her money. She accepts the story. He uses the same pretext to arrange further meetings, and the two grow close. He names her Farida.

Hassan's life unravels when his mother finally confronts him with the truth: his father died years ago. The man he has been speaking to, confiding in, and riding motorcycles with exists only in his mind. Shortly after, Hassan discovers that Farida is also a hallucination. He had glimpsed a real woman at the café once and drawn her face, and his mind had constructed an entire relationship around that image. When he reviews the photographs he believed he had taken of the two of them together, she does not appear in a single one.

Hassan is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With his mother's help, he enters a psychiatric facility and begins treatment. He responds to medication and therapy, and his hallucinations subside. He completes a model motorcycle he had been unable to finish during his illness, and reconnects with a friend who had watched him withdraw over the years.

After his discharge, Hassan turns down an offer to develop his aviation project abroad and instead petitions for it to be implemented domestically. The engineering committee approves it.

Returning to his regular café, Hassan encounters the real woman his hallucination of Farida had been modeled on. Her name is Maryam. She recognizes him as the man who once sketched her portrait. He tells her what he has been through. They begin a relationship, marry, and have children.

In the film's final scene, Hassan attends a birthday party for one of his children and sees both his parents among the guests. A family photograph is taken. His parents do not appear in it.

• Ahmed Helmy: Hassan
• Mahmoud Hemida: Hassan's father
• Menna Shalabi: Farida
• Dalal Abdel Aziz: Hassan's mother
• Mohamed Sharaf: The blind man (Naseem)
• Youssef Eid: The flag seller
• Yasser El-Toubgy
• Wael Alaa: Waiter at Viking Restaurant
• Sami Maghawry: The psychiatrist
• Ahmed Fouad Selim: The engine company manager
• Tarek El-Telmesany: The owner of a foreign airline
• Amr Mamdouh
• Mohamed El-Saadany
• Raouf Mostafa
• Reda Idris: The groom
• Hany El-Sabbagh

Sorry to Disturb was one of the two highest-grossing films in Egypt of 2008, earning over E£15 million.^[1] The film won first prize at the Egyptian National film festival^[2] and won the Dear Guest magazine award for best movie of 2008.^[3] Helmi won the Egyptian Catholic Center Cinema Festival award for Best Actor for the third year running,^[4] and the film won Best Film, Best Director, Best Script, and Best Production.^[5]

The soundtrack includes "Don't Speak" by No Doubt and "Buddha Bar" by Wally Brill.

• Sorry to Disturb at IMDb
• Gomaa, Mahmoud (6 August 2008). ""Sorry for the Disturbance" review". Al Jazeera (in Arabic). Retrieved 2009-07-07.