18 Days: the Egyptial revolution as seen by Egyptian filmmakers

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Egypt will inaugurate a new initiative at the Festival de Cannes, which will be repeated each year in Around the Selection:  the guest country As the highlight of this tribute is the screening of Tamantashar Yom (18 Days), a collective work on the Egyptian revolution, signed by ten filmmakers, including Yousry Nasrallah.

 

18 days. That is what it took for the Egyptians to change the course of history. It is also the title of a collective work on the revolution of 25 January in Egypt. Ten filmmakers, including two women, each shot a short fiction film about a story they had experienced, heard about or imagined. A wonderful initiative that offers another point of view from the one circulated by the media.

 

Interior Exterior shows a couple that is destroyed during the revolution: Mona wants to go to Tharir Square but her husband is against it. Quand le déluge survient (When the flood comes) tells about how two poor marginalised people manage to make some money by selling photos and flags. Retention presents patients in a psychiatric hospital who are imprisoned by the National Security Police prior to 25 January. Revolution Cookies is the portrait of a young diabetic man who wakes up on 28 January after four days in a coma… A multiplicity of stories and perspectives signed by Egyptian filmmakers.

 

Yousry Nasrallah, born in 1952, director of Bab el Chams (The Gate of the Sun), selected Out of Competition in Cannes in 2004, is one of the ten filmmakers of 18 Days. The others represent the vanguard of young Egyptian filmmakers: Sherif Arafa, Mariam Abou Ouf, Marwan Hamed, Mohamed Aly, Kamla Abou Zikri, Sherif El Bendari, Khaled Marei, Ahmad Abdallah and Ahmad Alaa.

 

These ten short films were shot under emergency conditions and entirely as a volunteer effort by ten filmmakers and their teams of actors and technicians. All profits from the initiative will go to pay for organising courses on civic and political education in certain Egyptian villages.

 

B. de M.

 

18 Days will be screened Wednesday, 18 May at 8 p.m., Salle du Soixantième.