Not everything goes according to plan at a children’s birthday party held by an Egyptian working-class family. A magic trick goes wrong, and the father is turned into a chicken. The magicians are bewildered, but this development primarily affects the chicken’s wife, who is left to support the household.

Omar El Zohairy’s feature debut is a bone-dry and absurd comedy, where much of the humor springs from the film’s gravely serious tone and social-realist aesthetic. Gloomy and dead-pan Scandinavian humorists like Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson appear to be prominent influences. Like his Nordic colleagues, El Zohairy uses comedy to discuss weightier themes, and as Feathers gradually becomes a story of a woman struggling to make ends meet, it sheds a satirical light on gender and class relations in Egypt. The result is a film that simultaneously works as a dark comedy and a sincerely moving, kafkaesque tale of suffering.