Tallinn 2025 Review: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Heartbreaking Story Tracks a Maid's Journey Through Egypt's Fractured Class Dynamics

Sarah Goher’s first directing feature, Happy Birthday, follows Toha (Doha Ramadan), an 8-year-old live-in maid working in an upscale Cairo household.

On the 8th birthday of her employer's daughter, Nelly (Khadija Ahmed), Toha helps pack her belongings because Nelly’s mother Laila (Nelly Karim) and father Asser (Sharif Salamah) have separated and Laila is preparing to leave the luxurious house with her daughter.

Nelly remains focused on her party and wants her father to attend. Although Laila postpones the celebration, Nelly promises Toha that she may blow out one candle on the cake to fulfill her own wish if she succeeds in orchestrating the party.

Toha is resourceful. Although she did not attend school like Nelly, she is quick-witted, and her plan to bring Nelly’s parents together for the party works. The film uses this setup to trace the gradual erosion of Toha’s sense of belonging as the celebration becomes a pressure point for the household’s fragile dynamics.

Goher’s previous industry work as a writer and producer on titles such as Cairo 678 (2010), Clash (2016), and Amira (2021) positions her within a sphere of socially-engaged Egyptian filmmaking. The earlier titles directed by Mohamed Diab, who serves here as co-writer and executive producer, applied formal restraint to socially charged subjects ranging from gender-based violence to political unrest.

While Goher’s collaboration with Diab signals continuity in thematic concerns, her directing debut departs from his more overtly conflict-driven frameworks. Instead, she adopts an intimate, kinetic portrait inspired by her own childhood memories of a maid working in her grandmother’s home.

Happy Birthday unfolds over a single day from dawn to dusk and keeps Toha at the center of every frame. Toha unpacks boxes already prepared for the movers to restore the illusion of an orderly, prosperous household. Laila even takes her to a sprawling mall, which appears to Toha like a theme park, and goes on a shopping spree. Until now largely confined to Nelly’s household, Toha experiences the outing with an overwhelming rush, revealing how insulated she has been.

Her sense of comfort begins to shift when Laila instructs her to call her by her first name and to act as though she is her daughter, explaining that some people would not understand she is the maid. Toha overlooks the implication and embraces the illusion of familial closeness. After returning to the gated community, she confides to Laila that she considers them her family and hopes to move with them.

As the party approaches, Laila’s mother (Hanan Youssef) warns that it would be unwise for Toha to be present among Nelly’s friends and their parents, since the appearance of a child maid could draw criticism. Toha is removed from the house under the pretense that her mother Nadia (Hanan Motawie) has been hospitalized.

After a complicated journey home, the disparity between her life and Nelly’s becomes unmistakable. Toha, along with her widowed mother and her younger siblings, live in a poor village that sharply contrasts with the villa she has left behind. She is immediately drawn into the family’s work of catching fish to sell at the market.

Yet she focuses only on not disappointing Nelly by missing the party, unaware that she is no longer welcome. Determined, she devises a plan to return to the celebration despite the obstacles she faces as a child.

The film follows Toha’s adventures to make it to the party over the course of a single day in a tender but heartbreaking coming-of-age story. Although the loss of innocence lingers underneath, Toha’s perspective does not fully register the situation; she simply prefers the gated community to her cramped home and does not understand the transactional nature of her relationship with the family. She remains unaware of the socioeconomic divide that shapes her circumstances.

Goher does not frame the film as a direct indictment of child labor, although the reality is evident from the outset. Instead, she immerses the viewer in a child’s perspective that cannot yet interpret class distinctions, social hierarchies, or the conditional nature of affection. Toha’s idealistic determination acquires weight as she is pushed out of the household without comprehending why.

A recurring motif of maternal attachment structures the film. Toha forms a surrogate bond with Laila while feeling more distant from her actual mother, who is overwhelmed by the pressures of supporting several children with limited means. Laila offers a degree of warmth but becomes more withdrawn as her own circumstances change and her affluent lifestyle, tied to her husband’s income, dissolves.

Although implicitly psychological, Happy Birthday employs the energy of a child adventure shaped by Toha’s point of view. Doha Ramadan as Toha carries the film on her tiny shoulders with an impressive performance and stalwart energy. She is the star of the film. She anchors the narrative’s emotional movement, from problem-solving ingenuity to the confusion of being abruptly excluded from Nelly’s world.

And Ramadan as Toha breaks the audience’s heart with pristine innocence. Goher’s decision to avoid a didactic social-drama and poverty porn approach allows the film to operate as an emotionally modulated exploration of intersecting worlds: rich and poor, children and grownups, isolation and reality.

Happy Birthday was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.