Youssef is a hotshot anesthesiologist who often sleeps in his car for privacy. Laila (Hend Sabri) is the careerist host of a late night radio call-in show. These two members of Cairo’s elite, lost souls traveling parallel paths of longing and disconnection, are the principal fish in Yousry Nasrallah’sThe Aquarium, a meditation on the intellectual capital of the Middle East, now bent under the sway of repression in all its forms.

A short philosophical reflection about receiving a fatal medical diagnosis in springtime when the power of nature is as strongest. It is a surreal state and all beauty and happiness is in contrast to the bleakness of the situation. Abruptly confronted by the question what is truly important the turmoil is within…Wordless. Life becomes painfully clear and the strongest feeling of all is that we have each other now, not tomorrow. There may never be a tomorrow.