Why do social taboos still paralyse Egyptian cinema?

It was a standard question asked in a survey posted by an Egyptian talk show host on his Twitter account a few hours before he went live: how would you describe the first Netflix Arabic movie Ashab wala Aaz? The answers lifted the lid on social taboos in society and started a hard-hitting debate about the movie's main storylines. Without giving away too much – a man married to a woman but drawn to another, a woman who cheats on her husband, and a teenage daughter of a supposedly liberal mother who shows her conservative self when faced with evidence about her daughter's personal life.

Since its release on January 20, the coming-of-age remake of the Italian film Perfect Strangers has been portrayed by several Egyptian TV hosts as an allegory of the triumph of good, the overwhelming majority of the Egyptians in their views, over evil.

Their opinion has elicited a different response from many Egyptians on social media, who have said the uncomfortable scenes have exposed unspoken social changes. Others took to the extreme, comparing the jump on the movie and the stream of invective criticism of Egyptian actress Mona Zaki to the Spanish inquisition in the medieval ages, whose mission was persecuting the educated and literate under the pretext of fighting heresy. “It’s possible that Europe and the West are like that. But the Netflix movie hasn’t anything that’s like us. Let’s ban Netflix,” one celebrity presenter tweeted.

“They do exist in our society. Stop playing ostrich,” replied an Egyptian civil society activist with more than 400k followers.

The presenter thinks that the Egyptian characters in the movie are not real Egyptians. But his call for banning one of the most popular streaming entertainment platforms in the world with more than 200 million subscribers has been also met with derision and jokes among many Twitter users.

Netflix has broken American barriers and rank as one of the top subscription-based services in Egypt and the Arab world today. Diversity is also a central to the company’s strategy. Like many countries, Egypt, too, has its share of conspiracy theorists, on Facebook, in particular, who spread misinformation – characteristic of America’s QAnon cult that sees former US president Donald Trump as a hero.

It was this segment of people, who tend to inundate social media with falsehoods. So when Netflix’s shares crashed on January 21, one day after the controversial film premiered, they attributed it to an instant massive Egyptian boycott and cancellations. They even dismissed diversity and liberal thinking as imitations of the West and part of a conspiracy dating back to the British colonial era.

This is not the first time in Egypt that attempts at "cancel culture" have been seen. In 2018, Egyptian actress Rania Youssef was accused of “inciting debauchery” for wearing a revealing black gown to the Cairo Film Festival in which the fabric covering her legs was see-through. Some Egyptians were divided on whether it was an indecent act or Youssef had every right to wear whatever she wanted.

A year before that, there was heavy sarcasm in the social sphere, as a lawyer sued a puppet, depicted as a gossipy widow with rollers in her hair, and who used to be the public face of a popular satirical TV show known as Abla Fahita. The puppet had a great sense of humour who would discuss social issues that made headlines and went viral online thanks to the jokes that punctured tensions on both sides of any debate.

The lawyer said that the puppet was immoral and didn’t reflect the values of Egyptian society. He used the same charge against the show’s producers in his criminal complaint to a public prosecutor: “promoting debauchery”. But some argue that it is all fuss about nothing, as Egyptian cinema has produced several movies in the past seven decades that tackle real conundrums in society. In 1960, for example, director Salah Abu Seif's stellar Between Heaven and Earth, not to be confused with Najwa Najjar's film of the same name, captured Egyptians of different walks in life in 85 minutes. The characters were all trapped in a lift, which got stuck between two floors.

This film, based on a novel by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, brilliantly depicted the very real issues of discrimination, sexual harassment, grinding poverty and the lives of the very rich, a world completely different from the impression created in certain circles that everything is OK. All the scenes of the movie were framed perfectly in one location.

It was described by critics as one of the great movies in the history of Arab cinema. What made that movie really matter to Egyptians? Perhaps that it made one think and expanded an understanding and lent perspective to aspects of society that resonate with audiences everywhere.