Arij - Scent of Revolution
Realizador Viola Shafik
Países Egypt
Duração 87 min
Sinopse
The film undertakes a journey into the past during the critical times of Egyptian revolution. It is hampered though by the filmmaker's inability to connect these different memories and tell a coherent story. For, as she finds out in a dialogue with one of her protagonists quoting the Cuban novel “Memories of Underdevelopment”: it is the nation itself that has lost its ability to remember and connect things., The film follows four very different characters and shifts locations without creating overt narrative connections between them: In Upper Egypt Safwat Samaan, a Coptic political activist and the photo collector Francis Amin try to reconstruct the story of their hometown Luxor that was destroyed during the rule of Mubarak due to state corruption and neo-liberal economy, in Cairo socialist writer Alaa El-Dib compares the 1952 and the January 2011 revolution and reflects on his own political disillusionment and marginalization. His depression is anti-thetically juxtaposed to the enthusiasm of a young female Islamist, cyber-designer Awatef Mahmoud who is asked to create an avatar for a secluded friend who is not allowed to join the political protest on the streets.
The film undertakes a journey into the past during the critical times of Egyptian revolution. It is hampered though by the filmmaker's inability to connect these different memories and tell a coherent story. For, as she finds out in a dialogue with one of her protagonists quoting the Cuban novel “Memories of Underdevelopment”: it is the nation itself that has lost its ability to remember and connect things., The film follows four very different characters and shifts locations without creating overt narrative connections between them: In Upper Egypt Safwat Samaan, a Coptic political activist and the photo collector Francis Amin try to reconstruct the story of their hometown Luxor that was destroyed during the rule of Mubarak due to state corruption and neo-liberal economy, in Cairo socialist writer Alaa El-Dib compares the 1952 and the January 2011 revolution and reflects on his own political disillusionment and marginalization. His depression is anti-thetically juxtaposed to the enthusiasm of a young female Islamist, cyber-designer Awatef Mahmoud who is asked to create an avatar for a secluded friend who is not allowed to join the political protest on the streets.