Helen's blog

         Yousry Nasrallah

Screening outside, on the second evening of KINOTOK was Egyptian film director, Yousry Nasrallah's seventh feature, SCHEHERAZADE, TELL ME A STORY, a film about women for women, by the socially conscious director, a Copt, born in 1952.
 
This contemporary portrayal of politics and female issues in today's CAIRO stars the glamorous and utterly modern Hebba (Mona Zakki) as the speaker of a SUN TV show that opines on cases of corruption in Egypt. She is married to a more complacent journalist, Karim (Hassan El Raddad), a candidate  to a post as editor-in-chief of a major government-sponsored newspaper, whose superiors have summoned him to get her to "cool down". In order to appease her husband, Hebba re-orients her show to interviews held with different classes of women who have gone through some major emotional trauma or accident in life. One  is a middle-aged woman who reveals her ideal was to marry for love, instead of an arranged marriage. It is only when she thinks she finally meets a suitable suitor, to her disappointment, over a candle-lit truce, she finds out he's a control freak, imposing humiliating and disadvantageous (for her) conditions for their betrothal and future married life.
 
The second,  a female dentist, falls prey to a callous upper-class gigolo, refusing to accept paternity when she falls pregnant during their legal engagement. The cad subsequently tries to bribe her and her rich family, threatening to destroy her reputation.
 
Finally, Safaa, one ot three sisters, who all inherited a warehouse store after their father died, tells how she brutally committed murder and served time, after finding out their shop employee, Said, had three-timed the spinster sisters, unbeknownst to all.          
 
The stories of the betrayals of these female victims turn out much more political than expected and this causes conflict in Hebba's marriage, especially after the decision is taken NOT to appoint her husband in the prized editor post, upon which, after a severe wife-beating, the speakerine herself decides to testify on the air as the last victim.
 
The stories are told as modern Arabian Nights tales in flashback and then intertwined into the TV Sun talk show studio interview shots.

The plots capture attention as all the stories start out as romantic love tales but build up like melodramas, to sheer betrayal and oppression, the point the director wishes to underline. This film, in fact, is a scathing portrayal of how females are confronted with and subsequently have to cope, with misogynism in modern Egyptian society, at every level of it.

The melodramatic pace is underscored by the accompanying music composed especially for the film. But the simple tales, skilfully allow the delivery of an intelligent vision of women fighting for their dignity and freedom.

The director himself,  best explains his motivation as follows:" What I am interested in, in all my films, is the individual's relation to major historical or social issues. How does one try to define oneself, not only perceiving oneself as a victim of history or social conditions. And in each of my films, there has always been a special place reserved for women. What I like here is how these women at rock bottom manage to reconstitute themselves as human beings. Without a trace of misery." (Youry Nasrallah).

To cap off the evening screenings, the Kino Otok Film Festival is conducting its usual accompanying programme taking place at the IZOLA Lighthouse on the beach with nightly documentary films presented, mostly from SLOVENIA, focussing on the exploration of contemoporary social phenomena, mostly in connection with marginalised social groups and minorities and their exclusion from public discourse. Discrimination, integration, immigrants, assimilation, multiculturalism and homosexuality feature among the buring issues serving as the backdrop for questioning Slovene "openness" and cosmopolitanism. Biljana Pavlovic is in charge of selection.

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