What’s a mother? The woman who brings a child to this world or the one who nurtures and takes care of him even if he’s not her own?
Do mothers’ instinct exist? If it does, is it something innate or something developed while raising children?
These are some of the questions that Egyptian TV series 'Without Warning' questions in its fifteen episodes, broadcasted in Ramadhan 2024.
Directed by Hani Khalifa, the series focuses on a young couple Marwan (Asir Yasin) and Laila (Aisha bin Ahmed) who have been married for almost ten years and have an eight-year-old son called Omar.
The first scene shows them both at a marriage counseling session where Laila is explaining how malfunctioned their marriage is while Marwan is convinced that she’s trying to create a problem that doesn’t exist when everything is well between them.
Once they’re home, Omar falls ill and is rushed to the emergency where he’s diagnosed with Leukemia. The doctor recommends an immediate stem cell transplant but when blood test is done, they discover that Omar is not their son. He’d been switched at birth with their own child.
But who are his real parents? Did their real son end up with them instead? The search starts immediately while as a viewer you are in two minds: what’s the point of finding the real son? Are they going to swap him with Omar?
Would the other family agree given the fact that their own child — a total stranger — has Leukemia and needs taking care of? What about Omar himself?
How would he feel about this distressing news? As a director, Hani Khalifa had always shown a great interest in relationship dynamics starting with his 2003 critically acclaimed movie 'Sahar El Layali' (Sleepless Nights) where he discussed different problems that three couples were facing, given the fact that they’re close friends and some were old flames.
However, in this series he also throws in family dynamics whether it’s Laila’s troubled relationship with her parents or Marwan’s brother Hassan (Ahmed Khalid Saleh) who can’t understand his wife’s attachment to her troublesome brother, which is the cause of constant fights between them.
The series highlight Egyptian society with its endless bureaucracy and streaks of corruption that hinders genuine search efforts.
Even the legal side of raising the wrong child includes — shockingly — a public denouncement for the police to officially help find your own child.
Aisha bin Ahmed depicts well the grieving mother torn between the love of the child she raised and wanting to find out about her own son; and the wife who’s struggling in her marriage and career that she’d just started after a long break. Asir Yasin was convincing as the father who embarks on the impossible journey of finding his real son while trying to take care of Omar, the child he raised.
Saleem Yusif who plays Omar was very impressive at the role of a child suffering from Leukemia and how it affects him physically and mentally.
Eventually, what unites them as a family is the struggle and the emotional roller coaster that they go through where they rely on each other’s strength and support.
Although there were fifteen episodes in the series, yet the first few ones were slow but the rest was well-paced. Also, it was hard to understand Marwan and Laila’s dispute at the start yet flashbacks in every episode helped to gradually reveal it till the viewer got to the core at the end.
'Without Warning' is an intense and emotionally charged drama that assumes a rare situation and tries to find a real solution to it. Available on Netflix.
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