‘Harka’ is an Arabic word meaning ‘to burn’. It’s also Tunisian slang for a migrant without papers crossing the Med to reach Europe. Both could apply to twenty-something street vendor Ali, the unlikely, unprepossessing focus of British-Egyptian Lofty Nathan’s first feature.
He sweats through the day standing at the roadside with cans to sell smuggled petrol to motorists. He’s unwashed, his clothes are grubby and stained – he’s squatting in an unfinished building – and he never smiles. He’s riled that he has to pay off the local police, but he has almost got together the dinars to become a harka.
