the film is in colour, but frequently splices in archive footage, mostly in black and white, forcibly integrating a documentary perspective on egyptian history. the main character, yehia, often alludes to shakespeare's "hamlet". yehia is the same character as the one who appears in the 1979 film "alexandria... why?". while the film's frame narrative and its flashbacks are shot in a realist mode, the courtroom drama within yehia's chest is dream-like and highly symbolic.