The Egyptian film industry, once dubbed the "Hollywood of the Arab world," has undergone significant transformations, reflecting the changing social and cultural landscape of Egypt. While classic Egyptian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s concentrated on love stories and domestic plots, modern films often delve into themes of sex, violence, and social upheaval.
The Shift Towards Sex and Violence
Today, Egypt’s film industry is dishing out heavy doses of sex, violence and mayhem. Prison orgies, drug dens in Cairo slums, rape and gangland shootouts are the order of the day. The emphasis on sex and violence is challenging Egypt’s conservative Muslim culture. In Cairo, veiled women walk past billboards showing actresses squeezed into low-cut dresses fawning on muscular heroes toting guns.
Young men flock to watch films such as “Age of Strength” or “Hilaly’s Fist,” which depicts a rugged Charles Bronson-type character who uses martial arts to execute a gang of rapists. It shows the rape too. The films match what many Egyptians see as a harsher, more violent mood in their society.
Authorised to be shown: Censorship of the arts in Egypt
“Many of these films don’t have anything you can call a plot,” said Ahmed Hassouna, a researcher in Egyptian films at the American University in Cairo. “I don’t like to say this, because it supports the idea of censorship, but I’m sure all the violence has an effect on people.”
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The Impact of Competition
Videos, satellites and competition from other Arab countries and India have cut into Egypt’s film industry. Cairo studios now put out about 30 films a year, down from a peak of about 100 in the 1950s. Budgets are low, averaging between $100,000 and $200,000, with a total revenue of only about $10 million.
Although visitors find Egypt a gentle, happy-go-lucky country despite mass poverty and urban overcrowding, legal authorities say violent crime is on the rise. A recent sexual assault of a young woman in a Cairo bus station preoccupied public opinion for several weeks. Judges worried by widening drug use have called for traffickers to be hanged in public.
Critiques and Social Commentary
No clear link has been established between lurid films and the rise in violence, but film critics say producers are targeting younger markets. “Our cinema is absorbing all its ideas from America . . . we mimic them blindly,” critic Ahmed Bahgat said. “Most directors are either vulgar or merchants who want to entertain the public so they drench them in sex and violence.”
But one recent box-office hit, “Kitkat,” was praised for the way it showed the poor Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba with all its problems--drink, drugs, premarital sex and deep poverty.
Censorship has been relaxed in recent years. “We can now raise problems for the first time,” Bahgat said. “In the old days, to show doctors, lawyers or policemen as corrupt was taboo.“But you get one film that raises problems like consumerism and drug use and then a series of others which exploit the spectacle and lose the perspective.”
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Examples of Egyptian Films and Their Themes
Several Egyptian films explore various social and political themes:
- Meditations on corruption, fundamentalism, prostitution, homosexuality, and drugs in central Cairo.
- Yehia is a young man living in the cosmopolitan Alexandria during World War II, inspired by American movies and Shakespeare, he aspires to be an actor, but struggles to pursue his Hollywood dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.
- After studying literature at Cairo University, Dunia, 23 years old, wants to become a professional dancer. She attends audition for an oriental dance contest where she recites Arabian poetry without any body movement. She explain to the perplexed jury that a woman can't move her body or evoke act of love when society ask women to hide their femininity. She is selected and meet Beshir, an intellectual and activist who will supervise her thesis on ecstasy in Sufi love poetry. Their attraction is mutual. This could be liberation for Dunia but the constraints on women in Egyptian society goes deeper than she suspects.
- Sheikh Hosny is a blind man who lives with his old mother and his frustrated son in the Kit Kat neighborhood. His son Youssef dreams of going to Europe to find work, and has a relationship with a divorced woman named Fatima. Sheikh Hosny refuses to admit his handicap and dreams of riding a motorcycle like every sighted person, he also spends his nights smoking marijuana with the locals in order to forget his miseries after the loss of his wife and selling his father's house. He knows everything about his neighbors and their secrets and love affairs.
- A child who loves the cinema struggles with his fanatic dad who finds everything ,including cinema, a sin, with the help of his mother who is sexually depressed.
- This film is an exploration of what happens to places in general, and people in particular, once the menfolk abandon an Egyptian village to investigate the greener-grass on the proverbial 'other side'. The womenfolk, those too old and those too young are left behind... and as the years pass, only letters return, telling tales of loneliness and hard-times. A young man, Ahmed, grows-up under these surroundings and has to deal with being the de-facto man-in-charge; when several of the migrant workers return one day, everyone has to come to terms with things being forever changed.
- It tells about the smallest details and crypts in the lives of four couples friends.
- Abla travels to France on a scholarship and is unknowingly recruited by the Israeli Mossad as a journalist. After discovering the truth, she involves her fiancé, an army engineer. Egyptian intelligence uncovers the plot and goes after her.
- Officer Magdy investigates the suicide of a groom on his wedding night. During the investigation, he discovers that the groom was impotent. Later, he realizes that impotence is spreading among all men in Egypt and sees it as a national epidemic. However, the government officials won't declare that out of shame. So he teams up with a young journalist to bring up the truth about it.
- Egyptian director Youssef Chahine exposes the links between power and fanaticism and denounces intolerance in this bitter portrait of the Egyptian business world, where unconditional drive for money rules. Adam (Hani Salama), the son of a rich businessman and his American wife, meets Hanane (Hanane Turk), a journalist of modest means at the airport on his return from his studies in the US. She is part of a campaign against a wealthy elite, which has thrived on plundering its own people. They fall in love and get married. Corruption is everywhere in the country and American interests are taking over the lucrative tourist trade. Adam's rich parents and their friends in the government are at the heart of this corrupt system. Adam's mother, Margaret (Nabila Ebeid), nourishes a strange affection for her son. She is possessive to the point of violence and is ready to get rid of Hanane, whom she considers her rival. Adam turns against the global economy of which his parents are the perfect examples as he sees through the greed of international speculators and the secret ties that bind them to fanatical fundamentalist sects. The fact that Hanane's brother has become an Islamist terrorist does not help matters. The resistance that the couple has to put up makes them grow strong, for which they pay a heavy price. 52nd Cannes Film Festival, 1999.
- An unscrupulous archaeologist searches for Alexander's treasure, using clues he finds by desecrating historical sites and artifacts; but he is not the only one who is trying to find the treasure.
- A poor farmer named Antar seeks employment in Italy to earn his living where he finds himself in awkward situations.
- Three Arab women living in France trying to get a better life. Aida an Egyptian divorced painter, Amal a lebanease Journalist who suffers from her massochism, & So'ad from Morroco who works in a shop & lives with the old & impotent owner. The three of them become related to each other trying to stay out of trouble.
- One of the most controversial Egyptian movies ever made. An adult teen drama about Gameela a dreamy girl with two lives. A real unsatisfying life with on the edge of divorce parents and a strict mother. Her other life is as Cleopatra having a love affair with Anthony. But she happens to meet the guy at the real life and have a true love affair. But with her strict mother, her best friend being jealous of her trying to destroy the affair, her wealthy spoiled rich boy trying to seduce her, and having her other friends' sexual experiences with the tragic ending as a bad example. The problem explodes when the affair goes to sexual levels.
- Omar decides to emigrate to America as his 30th birthday approaches, but first he wants to get revenge on the people who have gotten in his way.
- Sherif returns from London with his girlfriend Sahar, he learns from her father that his identical twin brother Hassan is in prison for embezzling money from the company.
Arab Adult Film Stars
Arab adult film stars have historically been underrepresented, but notable pioneers began to emerge in the 1990s and 2000s. Many performers have roots in Arabic countries, primarily from North Africa, along with Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran.
Notable performers include:
- Amy: Began her career working in the U.K. Her diverse heritage has contributed to her being frequently featured in both Ebony and Arabic-themed scenes.
- Anissa Kate: Known for her versatility, Anissa has been featured across a wide range of genres and niches within the industry.
- Arabelle Raphael: A French performer of Tunisian descent who began her career in the adult industry in 2010, starting in her early twenties. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with prominent studios such as Evil Angel, Kink, and Reality Kings, among others.
- Brooke Lee Adams: A San Diego native of Persian descent, began her career in the adult industry in 2009 while in her early twenties.
- Carmel Moore: Made her entry into the business during the mid-2000s, and continued her a career as a Persian adult film star into the late 2010s. Standing at 5’2″, Moore initially began as a model before entering the business. Known as a true MILF actress, she appeared in over 50 scenes throughout the 2000s, working with prominent studios such as Lethal Hardcore, Score, Naughty America, Heatwave, Girlfriends Films, and others.
- Roxie Sinner: A Syrian-American performer from Los Angeles, is a newcomer to the adult industry who debuted in 2021 in her early 20s.
- Savannah Fox: An Arab-American performer from New York, entered the adult industry in 2012 while in her mid-twenties.
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