Living Skin Trailer (2011)

A close look at child labour, Living Skin presents a week in the lives of five boys who live and work in Magra El-Oyoun, a neighbourhood in the heart of old Cairo that’s home to more than 300 slaughterhouses and tanneries. Engaging and wise beyond their years, the boys speak plainly about the circumstances that took them out of school and into the workforce. Many are second-generation labourers and work alongside their fathers in dangerous conditions with no protection. Director Fawzi Saleh won a Jury Special Mention Award at Abu Dhabi International Film Festival for this debut documentary. His first foray into socially relevant cinema is well crafted and subtle. He lets the kids tell their own stories, confident that once we know them we’ll have to wonder what lives they might have had if given the chance to grow up far from the heaps of rotting skins.