Monday, October 24, 2011

CIFF 2011: Cairo 678

I think the best intent of an international film festival is to screen films from countries that bring to light a topic fairly unique to that country yet still identifiable to people around the world. Cairo 678 is such a film. It involves the actions taken by three different women in Egypt in their attempt to fight their society and culture's views of women and the harassment they face on a daily basis.


Fayza (played by an actress named Bushra) is overworked in a government office, and a wife and mother. She has to take crowded buses to get to work, and has to endure the paws of men feeling her up in the crowd. She endures this because she and her husband are trying to make a better life for their children by earning just enough through several jobs to keep them in a private school. At first she does not tell her husband of this demoralization action against her.

Seba (Nelly Karim) is a modern jewelry designer, and quite Westernized in her lifestyle. Her husband is a doctor. One night after a soccer match, she is molested by a mob of men when she and her husband are separated. She is angry because not only was her husband not able to come to her rescue due to the crowds, he thinks she should forget the incident and move on. This molestation convinces Seba to hold a class to encourage women to be unafraid to admit to being victims and to take charge of their own lives.

Nelly (El Seba'ay) is a young, outspoken stand-up comedian, making jokes about issues that are pretty unheard of for women to talk about publicly. Her fiancé is also a comic, who, although he supports her career, cautions her to stay on less volatile subjects. On her way to visit her mother one day, she is molested in public and fights back. This incident and her subsequent treatment by the dismissive police convince her to bring the very first lawsuit against sexual harassment, which brings a lot of criticism of her, despite having been the victim. As expected, she does not back down from her lawsuit, which angers her fiancé.

Seba speaks on television about her past molestation to encourage other women to defend themselves, and Fayza sees this broadcast and attends Seba's class. Although initially Fayza doesn't admit to Seba of her own harassment, she takes a vigilante approach and maims men who are unlucky enough to choose her as a sexual victim. Nelly also finds these two women, and although the three share their anger and experiences, much dialogue is still repressed. Soon the vigilante crimes are reported on in the media, although the maimed males claim to be innocent victims themselves, as they don't want to own up to being molesters. Soon there is a lot of discussion about why these vigilante crimes are happening, and about women empowering themselves against this behavior from men. The men in the three women's lives have different levels of support (or non-support) and continue for the most part to spout party lines about women's roles in their culture. There is a point where the women each question if what they are doing has come too far, damaging their relationships and their standing in their community.

In the meantime, a police detective (Maged El Kedwany) is investigating the vigilante crimes and suspects Fayza, Nelly and Seba are involved. Although he does not have concrete evidence against them, he can understand why they are taking matters into their own hands. While publicly he won't take their side, privately he cautions them to be careful and seems to sympathize with them.

The film showed many differences in the women, in their experiences with family and their harassment, yet they could come together to fight the larger cause. Importantly, it didn't shy away from still making their views different in how to deal with their problems which the other women would disagree on. The male characters are portrayed similarly, some who continue to see women the same way and others who opened their minds a little to see the woman's point of view.  It was dismaying to see how young males were even ingrained in this behavior.

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