Xoftex is raw, demanding and difficult to forget. Noaz Deshe does more than show life in a refugee camp: his fractured filmmaking tries to make its psychological pressure tangible.
Nasser and his brother Yassin live in a former industrial complex that feels more like a prison than a refuge. They make comedy sketches and plan a homemade zombie film, finding creative, bitterly ironic resistance among containers, improvised beds and fences.
Reality and fantasy slide into one another. The camera stays close, moves through corridors and switches between documentary-like observation and surreal passages. Noise, silence, memories and imagined images seem to place us inside Nasser's head. The zombie project becomes a metaphor for survival rather than a comic diversion.
The cast's lived experience gives the performances force. Abdulrahman Diab brings Nasser a persistent, quiet pain. Osama Hafiry and Jalal Albaroudi are especially strong in moments of listening, watching and reacting.
Claustrophobic interiors, pale light and sudden dream images create an intense visual experience. Thomas Moked-Blum and Deshe's driving, unsettling soundtrack strengthens it.
A linear story or conventional dramatic structure is not what this film offers. Its breaks and discomfort require concentration. For me, that uncompromising approach makes it deeply human: a view from inside an unbearable situation, rather than a polished drama looking at it from a safe distance.