[1] The film is essentially a fictional biography of a self-centred, chain-smoking, highly-strung, radical realist film-maker named Yehia Choukry Mourad.

[2] The child's witness stand comprises clear plastic tubes into which he drops white crystals, symbolising Yehia's arteries and the cholesterol that is choking them.

As different witnesses speak during the chaotic court scenes, the film presents different flashbacks to Yehia's life, starting with his unfair treatment by a bitter, Catholic primary-school teacher.

The film is in colour, but frequently splices in archive footage, mostly in black and white, forcibly integrating a documentary perspective on Egyptian history.

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.