In Jacob’s House New York filmmaker Lucas Kane offers us an audience with the titular painter, his neighbour, as he confronts a hostile eviction driven by encroaching gentrification. Grand development projects similarly inform Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin’s elegant, surprising The Cow’s Complaint—including government-led demolitions in Cairo’s City of the Dead—as experienced through the daily rhythms of Sufi sculptor Ali Al Gazzar. Each largely contained, while gesturing outward in refined, resonant gestures, these two films are musical, textured, and deeply sensorial in nature, while never sacrificing their political acumen.

Jacob’s House
Lucas Kane, 2025, U.S., 16mm, 22m

Jacob's House is a slow exploration of what constitutes a house and how a house constitutes a way of life. Made collaboratively between two neighbours–filmmaker Lucas Kane and painter Jacob Eye–this film traces Jacob's 14 year relationship to his home and his ongoing resistance to a brutal eviction attempt as a new wave of gentrification sweeps the neighbourhood.

The Cow’s Complaint (شكوى البقرة)
Mahdy Abo Bahat, Abdo Zin Eldin, 95 min

Ali Al Gazzar – a Sufi sculptor – encounters a visitation at midday. The guest spurs Ali to return to his creations, igniting him with the spiritual imagination of Sufi peasants, peripheral objects and rural animals in Cairo’s City of the Dead.

Total runtime: 117 min

Lucas Kane is a Brooklyn-based theater and film director. Since early 2024, he has served as assistant director to André Gregory and Wallace Shawn. Prior to that, he assisted Peter Brook on his final two plays, Why? and La Tempête. His films have been screened at New York Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Anthology Film Archives, Porto/Post/Doc, La Clef, Visual Studies Workshop, Microscope Gallery and many others.

Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin, Egyptian artist-filmmakers from Cairo, have a 10-year practice rooted in sound and image through audio field recordings and street videography. Their work has been shown in Cinema du Reel, Oberhausen International Short Film festival, 25FPS Film Festival, Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul and Documenta Madrid.

Jesse Cumming (he/him) is a curator, writer, researcher, and producer. He is the Associate Curator for the Wavelengths section at Toronto International Film Festival, a member of the selection committee for Open City Documentary Festival, and a consultant for the Berlinale Forum. Previously he served as a programmer with Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and in 2026 he co-curated MoMA’s Doc Fortnight Festival. He is a producer with Norway’s Stær Films.