March 26, 2026 | Screening, fundraiser and discussion | Shall I compare you to a summer's day? (2022)

RSVP your ticket here

• March 26, 2026, 6pm–9pm
• La Centrale galerie Powerhouse, 4296 Saint-Laurent Blvd. 
• Tickets: 15-30$, RSVP online or buy at the door - limited tickets available
• Fundraiser for feminist organization Haven for Artists, currently helping displaced people in Lebanon

Event details

6–7pm: Mingle time
7–8:45pm: Film screening followed by a discussion with artist Elias Nafaa
8:45–9pm: End of event, cool down and chit-chat

La Centrale welcomes in Tiohtiá:ke [Montréal] the cinematic work of filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan, بشتقلك ساعات | Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?. Join us for an evening of screening and discussion with La Centrale’s team and Elias Nafaa, an artist, architect, and researcher working between Montréal and Beirut. Three-quarters of the sales will go to Haven for Artists, a cultural feminist organization based in Beirut, Lebanon. The funds will be sent to their current fundraiser and used to distribute aid, shelter necessities and warm meals to people displaced in Lebanon. 

About the film

Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day? is a contemporary queer musical taking Arab folktales as its formal reference, and Egyptian pop music as its primary sonic material. It is based on the filmmaker's personal love diary and told in the form of a One Thousand and One Nights tale, where stories playfully unfold through conversations between Shahrazad, ghosts of former lovers and a narrator who never comes into view.

About the director

Mohammad Shawky Hassan is an Egyptian filmmaker and video artist living and working in Berlin since January 2019. His last film And on a Different Note premiered at the Berlinale—Forum Expanded, and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of its permanent collection.

Synopsis

“A glance leads to a smile, a smile to a rendezvous: every love story begins the same way. These narratives are stored in songs and poems and live on beyond their inevitable endings, as Shakespeare’s titular sonnet 18 also suggests. In Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s metafictional essay, a female narrator who wishes to tell the story of a love between two men encounters a polyamorous chorus of lovers, and this oft-told tale is multiplied.

In Club Scheherazade, there is no protagonist, and every song has various versions. Heteronormative dramaturgy is challenged polyphonically and across a range of media: lovers ask each other about threesomes, Grindr contacts and past dates. Pop clichés are twisted, heartache permeates the men’s singing, and poems by Wadih Saadeh are read out while a lover’s dirty laundry is aired. The narrator mischievously tries for a happy ending as her characters exit the story. “If pain could be forgotten through words,” we hear at one point, “no lover would ever have to walk away wounded.”

Source: Berlinale Archive, 2022. 

Cast & Crew

Cast: Donia Massoud, Ahmed El Gendy, Salim Mrad, Nadim Bahsoun, Hassan Dib/Queen
Of Virginity, Ahmed Awadalla and Richard Gabriel Gersch
Editing: Carine Doumit
Sound Design & Electroacoustic Composition: Kinda Hassan
Director of Photography: Carlos Vasquez
Production Designer: Veronica Wüst
Original Music Composition: Amen Feizabadi
Choir Director: Khyam Allami
Sound Recording: Tsvetelina Valkova
Hair & Makeup: Nuria de Lario
First Assistant Director: Alaa Abdullatif
Assistant Director: Ziyad Hawwas
Produced by: Mohammad Shawky Hassan, Maximilian Haslberger,
Producers: Hesham Marold, Carlos Vasquez
Line Producer: Dilara Çatak
Associate Producers: Karim Marold, Balthasar Busmann
Dramaturge: Ismail Fayed
Choreography: Jonathan Sanchez
Arabic Calligraphy: Shahd El Sabbagh
Title Design: Mina Maurice
Poster Design: Mahmoud Fathy
 

Images: © Aflam Wardeshan, Amerikafilm, with permission of Mohammad Shawky Hassan