A strict Muslim recalls his past moonwalking mojo back in this imaginative drama about boyhood dreams, first love and Michael Jackson.

It’s 2009, and Sheikh Khaled Hani is a conservative young imam… until news of Michael Jackson’s death catapults him into a spiritual crisis. Khaled is forced to confront memories of the gentle boy he was back in 1991, who survived a brutish father, missed a dead mother, pined for a pretty girl… and was obsessed with the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson enjoyed an intense underground fandom in the Arab world. In this, Egypt’s entry for the 2018 Academy Awards, director Amr Salama slyly evokes the look and feel of Jackson’s iconic songs without ever using the music itself. Sheikh Jackson questions why people embrace religious fundamentalism, and champions pop culture as another framework for our hopes and dreams. Shamon, inshallah!

"An offbeat charmer that boldly sets up its bizarre conceit and runs with it." – Hollywood Reporter