From AP:
The latest hit movie in Egypt opens with footage of Egyptian police brutally beating democracy protesters and ends with angry masses storming a police station where demonstrators are being tortured. The audiences cheer.
The film, “Heya Fawda” — Arabic for “It’s Chaos” — is a rare frank look at police torture, corruption and political oppression that rights groups say is widespread in Egypt. It has been pulling in viewers and raising controversy since it opened in November.
“Egypt’s anti-Egypt cinema” ran a headline earlier this month in Rose El-Youssef, a staunchly pro-government newspaper, whose editor wrote several long editorials denouncing the movie and accusing it of inciting people to revolt.
The movie comes at a time of intense polarization in Egypt. The government has successfully suppressed a wave of pro-democracy protests that erupted in 2005, arresting secular activists as well as hundreds of members of the main opposition movement, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
But a layer of discontent with the rule of President Hosni Mubarak continues. The government has been faced over the past year by a string of labor strikes — more than 500 in 2007 — demanding salary raises as the gap between rich and poor grows.
At the same time, bloggers have become more prominent in exposing police abuse. Videos of police torturing detainees have been posted on activists’ web sites, prompting authorities for the first time to prosecute and imprison several officers.
Even US President George W. Bush made a veiled reference to Egypt’s treatment of jailed dissidents in a speech last week in Abu Dhabi.
”You cannot build trust when you hold an election where opposition candidates find themselves harassed or in prison,” Bush said. ”And you cannot stand up a modern and confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.”
”It’s Chaos” was directed by one of Egypt’s most esteemed filmmakers, 82-year-old Youssef Chahine, and Khaled Youssef, a longtime Chahine protégé.
”My movies are not calling for chaos, they are warning of it,” Youssef told The Associated Press. The film ”is not about torture, its about the repression and corruption that prevail in the Egyptian authority.”
Audiences have responded: ”It’s Chaos” has already made more than $2 million in the first month, more than any of Chahine’s previous 30 movies did.
It tells the story of a corrupt policeman, Hatem, who tortures detainees with beatings and electrical shocks, takes bribes and stalks — and eventually rapes — the girl who lives next door to him, Nour.