Most directors would rest on their laurels after winning the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. They would be thinking about whether they are the type of person who keeps the award on their mantelpiece or uses it as a doorstop.
But when The Square, a documentary about Tahrir Square and the Egyptian democratic movement, won the big prize in Utah, its director Jehane Noujaim could only think about the fact that the fast-changing political landscape in North Africa had already dated the documentary.
“There were multiple times that we wondered: ‘Is this the ending?’” says Noujaim. “I think the first time we allowed ourselves to stop was when it was selected to Sundance and it became this film about the taking down of a president through to the election of a new one.
“But when we were winning the award, all our characters were back on the streets fighting because the new president had taken on dictatorial powers in the same way Mubarak had. Then it became a much more interesting film because it was now about a fight against fascism, whether that fascism be the face of Mubarak, the military or the Brotherhood. This cycle made for a much deeper and more fascinating film.”
So Noujaim and her crew returned to Tahrir Square and once again began filming the protagonists as they campaigned to turn Egypt into a democratic state. The new cut of the film – the one to be shown at DIFF – appeared at the Toronto International Film Festival and has been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination. Noujaim and her collaborator Khalid Abdalla, an actor best known for his turns in The Kite Runner and United 93, have been busy promoting the film around the world.
Abdalla put his career as an actor on hold while he took to the streets. He says: “I’ve had a really weird five years, which I would describe as being between a film that never ends and a film that never begins. I’m the third generation of a family that has been politically active in Egypt. Both my father and grandfather were politically active on the left and imprisoned. That was part of the reason I was born abroad. So my participation has a relationship with my family history, has a relationship with what I’m fighting for, but I see all these things as one and the same thing.”
Born in Scotland, Abdalla was interviewed countless times by the international media from Tahrir Square and has always tried to use his career as an actor and, now, film producer to bring about change. The 33-year-old adds: “Part of what I try to do is be involved in films that I feel attempt to break some of the stereotypes, dogmas and frankly racist prejudices that exist around Arab and Muslim identity, broadly speaking.”
It’s easy to imagine many people using their fame as an excuse not to join a street protest, but Abdalla says: “If you are honest about what you are trying to do, if that is part of your cause, then when things like this are happening, if you are not on the streets fighting just like everybody else, then essentially the hypocrisy is evident.”
The situation is still in flux in Egypt, but Noujaim says this will be the definitive cut, no matter what happens. “We are both Egyptian. The whole crew is in Egypt. We still have an office going in Cairo. We are definitely going to be giving updates and making short pieces,” she says, adding that any updates will most likely appear online. “But the film stands as it is. Regardless of events on the ground, this is the film that is going to be shown in five, 10, 50 years.”
• The Square screens tomorrow at Mall of the Emirates at 3.45pm
[ artslife@thenational.ae ]
