Projects in development
Under Green Skies
Synopsis
Under Green Skies follows Mona, a housemaid in her mid-30s who lives with her mother in Imbaba, a working-class neighborhood in Cairo. When her mother’s health declines, Mona takes over her job cleaning for a cultured family in Zamalek—an affluent district across the Nile. Between these two worlds divided by the river, Mona lives a life of muted repetition—quiet, invisible, and suspended between belonging and disconnection. Her only regular contact is a friend she speaks to by phone. When a foreign guest arrives at the house, a fragile connection forms. They talk about life, loneliness, and a strange rumor circulating online: that a green planet is inching closer to Earth. Whether real or imagined, the planet becomes a distant signal—not of salvation, but of a world caught in a suspended anticipation, one touched by a faint, uncertain glow that leaves everyone, and Mona most of all, waiting for something they cab sense but cannot yet name.
April Productions (Egypt)
Yara Goubran
Red Star Films (Egypt)
Baho Bakhash & Safei Eldin
Director’s statement
I see Mona cleaning a room, speaking quietly on the phone. Nothing feels extraordinary, yet her stillness holds me—the way she moves, the silence lingers. She spends her days crossing Cairo, between one polished, affluent district and another, crowded and worn. She belongs to neither. She doesn’t disappear, yet she’s barely seen. Mona is drawn from a woman I know, yet she has merged with a fictional character. Under Green Skies stays close to her rhythm: slow, repetitive, quiet—like the days of those living at the edges of visibility. In the background, a rumor drifts: a green planet nearing Earth, seeping into Mona’s days. It is neither symbol nor revelation—distant and elusive, as if about to shift something. What draws me is not to define her, but to remain near—to listen to what she doesn’t say and to feel her silence pause with the planet.
Biographies
Jad Chahine is a director and screenwriter based in Cairo. He studied filmmaking at the Higher Institute of Cinema and began his career as an assistant director with Yousry Nasrallah. In 2023, his debut short film The Call of the Brook became the first Egyptian film in nearly a decade selected for La Cinef at the Festival de Cannes. He is also currently in post-production on his second short film.
Yara Goubran is an Egyptian actor and producer. She graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2004 with a BA in theater and broadcast journalism. She began her career as a line producer at Lighthouse Films Cairo, where her work included the feature 18 Days, which had its premiere at the Festival de Cannes in 2011. She later freelanced as a content producer for various TV programs and went on to serve as executive producer of the award-winning feature 19B (2022). In 2024, she founded her own production company, April Productions.
