Set in the suburbs of Cairo in the late 1930s, the story follows a middle-class Egyptian family grappling with the hardships of life after the death of their father, their sole breadwinner. The mother and her four children—three brothers and their sister, Nefisah—struggle to avoid slipping into poverty. They all go in different directions which aren't exactly good.
Omar is a single employee who loves his neighbor Hoda, but her father refuses their marriage. Omar spends a night with his friends at a nightclub and the dancer, Aziza goes home with him. When she tries a drug by accident, she passes out and he thinks she's dead.
In the blasting heat of a Friday afternoon in Cairo, a group of people – among them a movie star, a thief, a madman, a cook and a pregnant woman – find themselves trapped in an elevator for 12 hours.
