In many ways, Omar Kafrawy contains multiple Complex MENA pillars in the same frame. Photographer, filmmaker, and archivist of the everyday –Kafrawy has spent years documenting Cairo’s music scenes, social rituals, and the many stories that live between traffic lights. So when it came time to commission an episode of SIDE QUEST, the brief didn’t need translation. Cairo was already the language. The car was already the camera. And the nearly 40 creatives featured in the video, were the cast.
SIDE QUEST is built on a simple idea: hand the lens to creators who live inside their cities, while bringing to life editorial pillars of Music, Sports, Pop Culture, Style, and Food. Kafrawy’s take unfolds behind the wheel, cruising Cairo one neighborhood at a time, picking up friends as the city reveals itself in fragments – while 3phaz’s “Phase 5” blares out of the open windows.
Along the way we meet several of the Complex MENA pillars personified, caught mid-life rather than posed for introduction.
“I spend most of my life in my car,” says Kafrawy. “To the extent where I was once given the title Kafrawy Streetview. Like many of my age and in my field of view, I experience most of Cairo through the windshield. I grew up in my car. I met love, friendship, and occasional transcendence in cars. It says something about our city that is once bleak but twice funny. It also says something about the speed at which we move and grow, as well as occasionally wear-out. Something about it is romantic.”
We begin with Ismail Sabet, photographer and devoted pop music listener in Dokki. Not long after, Valerie Arif enters the frame outside Gezira Sporting Club, a graphic designer and art director with a clear affection for fries and visual order. The route then shifts to Maadi, where Solimanga, a chef, casually assembles a salad in the backseat, turning food into a moving ritual.
Still in Maadi, Omar Mobarek, graphic designer and founder of UNTY, embodies streetwear as a lived language, where style grows directly from place and community. Music follows naturally. Label owner and manager, Asem Tag, slides into the conversation, soon followed by Rami Abadir, musician and critic, whose presence blurs creation and commentary.
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The journey continues with Ahmed Sorour, a multidisciplinary artist, stylist, and creative director, whose work sits at the center of shaping a new pop culture voice grounded in experimentation and instinct. Nearby, Malak El Ayouty trains the so-called untrainable, reframing sport as discipline, resilience, and belief. The film closes with Malak El Sawy, a Cairo-based photographer and DJ whose lens has long documented the city’s music, pop culture, and underground scenes, capturing the moments that usually slip past unnoticed.
“When I was commissioned a film about Cairo through my own eyes for the launch of Complex MENA, it felt natural to get in the driver’s seat,” says Kafrawy. “I spent the days around New Years picking up friends old and new and cruising around in their neighborhoods. We got to talking. Everyone in this video…”
SIDE QUEST in Cairo was directed and filmed by Omar Kafrawy, produced by Monica Abadir, with Marwan Rizhallah as assistant producer.
Read more about other Side Quests in Riyadh and Marrakech.
Chief Editor & Head of Content at Complex MENA.
