Ahmed Abdelhafiz as Obama in Yomeddine (Cannes Film Festival)

Harvey Weinstein was nowhere to be found at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. For the first time in decades, there wasn’t a film associated with the producer and distributor in the program, now that he has become persona non grata ever since the New York Times and The New Yorker broke the story of his reported criminal behavior. (Last year, for example, he had Wind River in the Un Certain Regard section.)

But on the first full day of the festival, the debut feature film by Austrian-Egyptian director A. B. Shawky, Yomeddine, felt like a shoo-in that would have been snapped up by Weinstein. The accessible and unique crowd-pleaser is in the mode of early 1990s art-house hits when Miramax was headed by Weinstein, like Cinema Paradiso, for one. It would also be a rarity: How many films made in Egypt have screened in U.S. theaters in the last five years? The Nile Hilton Incident and Clash are the only ones that comes to mind.

Yomeddine also has the blend of sentiment and grit found in Lion, one of Weinstein’s last acquisition hits. And for a film whose name translates from Arabic to “Judgment Day,” the message couldn’t be more embracing and nonjudgmental. (It’s the type of hopeful movie that filmgoers are more likely to see at the Toronto International Film Festival than in the South of France.)

It begins with Beshay (Rady Gamal) scavenging for metal in a trash heap, aided by a 10 year-old orphan, Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz). Despite the initial scene, any impression that the movie will wallow in developing-world woes is dispelled by its focus on character. A Christian and around 40 (so he thinks), Beshay had leprosy decades ago and now has visible scars throughout his body. He has lived most of his life in a desert leper colony, the one place where no one is afraid to touch him. Now a recent widower, he ventures out to search for what is left of his biological family. All he knows is the name of the his father and the village where he lives.

More on an impulse than having a well-thought out plan, Beshay heads south on his donkey-drawn carriage with all of his possession onboard, as well as a stowaway: Obama. The boy’s real name is Mohammad, but he goes by the name Obama for “the guy on TV,” and presumably because he has been ostracized; he has a darker complexion than the other orphans. (Though the film has an inclusive outlook,  it’s troubling when Beshay calls the adolescent a “buffalo.”) The donkey, by the way, will have a rough time hauling its passengers across the country; don’t get too attached to Harby.

The story line follows the map of many a road trip movie—theft, transportation snafus, the life-affirming kindness of strangers—but the enveloping sense of the location and the integrity and authenticity of Shawky’s ensemble of nonprofessional actors give the film a voice that is refreshingly no-nonsense and straightforward. Given that both lead actors have an easy camaraderie, the movie proves the adage that a film’s success is 90 percent casting.

Like his two lead characters, the filmmaker is upfront with his intentions and conveys them with ease. Yomeddine was a welcome festival entry, both for its sentimentality and lack of pretension.