[Lauchenoiria]

Film Title: القطط (English: Feline)
Nominating Nation: Zargothrax

Nomination Category/Categories: Best Film, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor
Language: Arabic
Run Time: 107 mins
Director: Rayan Tawfeek
Producing Studio/Company: Rawea Studios

Cast:
Farida Karim as Afsun Nejem (Best Lead Actor nominee)
Ismat Ahmadi as Randa (Best Supporting Actor nominee)
Khwaja Shirazi as Yacoub Al-Hashim
Mustafa Omar as Mamun Al-Hashim
Niloofar Ali as Zayna

Brief Summary:
Afsun Nejem (Farida Karim, human) is a sixteen-year-old babysitter with seven sisters desperate for work after the death of her father. She hangs around a job market (usually a section of a Thraxian town where people seeking work or employees go to advertise their jobs to Thraxians with limited or no literacy) but nobody wants to hire a girl without a male guardian. Eventually, she receives an offer from the mysterious Yacoub (Khwaja Shirazi, human) for 2 million rials a day (approximately 43 Sanctarian pounds), a fortune for a poor girl like Afsun (average pay for casual work in Zargothrax is around £1 a day). She accepts.

She is taken to Yacoub’s house where she meets his enigmatic brother Mamun (Mustafa Omar, human) and discovers that the “child” she has been hired to look after is a cat named Randa (Ismat Ahmadi, cat). Afsun finds this absurd and threatens to quit, but the brothers remind her of the money and she agrees to stay. At first, she spends the days watching TV and mostly ignoring Randa, who tries her best to get Afsun to pay attention to her. This fails, until one day Afsun is disturbed by distressed snarling and meowing. She rushes to the kitchen to find Randa being cat-napped by a masked figure on a bicycle.

Afsun gives chase, borrowing one of the brothers’ bicycles, which she has never learned to ride. There is a comedic bike chase with Afsun falling off before picking it up and closing the distance with the cat-napper at the bottom of a steep hill. Afsun tackles the cat-napper and pulls off the mask to reveal a girl her own age, Zayna (Niloofar Ali, human). It transpires that Zayna worked in the cat shelter where the Al-Hashim brothers adopted Randa and grew attached and missed the cat. Afsun takes Zayna back to the house where she explains things to the brothers and they take pity on her. Afsun offers to split half the money with Zayna so the brothers can hire her to cat-sit also and then she can spend time with Randa. The film ends with all four humans laughing and playing with Randa.

What makes this film special? Why was it nominated for these categories?
This is a rare example of a Thraxian film with a female lead character, where women appear on screen more than men and play the most prominent parts. Farida Karim is a young Thraxian actress who is paving the way for women in the Thraxian film industry; while the cat Ismat was nominated at the behest of King Shapur to “promote feline rights”.

Additional Info:
This entry was personally sponsored by King Shapur. It is widely believed that the studio made the film specifically to gain the attention of the cat-loving monarch.