The nighttime curfew, imposed by the army in the wake of the popular uprising against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, became fodder for several unique drama works.
‘Curfew’, a work by distinguished Egyptian director, Amir Ramses, is one of these works.
The incidents of the film take place within the span of the 12 hours of the nighttime curfew inside an apartment in Cairo.
It tells the story of a girl who loathes her mother and finds it difficult to spend the 12 hours of the curfew with her behind closed doors.
Behind this main plot, there are secrets that date 20 years back.
Ramses employs many twists to highlight the impacts political and security developments can have on society and people’s behaviour.
However, it is not a political piece of drama.
The nighttime curfew forced people to stay together for long hours against their own will.
This was how Ramses got the idea of his film.
“I selected the time of the nighttime curfew for the events of my film,” Ramses told the Egyptian Mail in an interview.
The mother in the film is enacted by veteran actress Elham Shahin and the daughter by budding actress Amina Khalil.
All through the film, the daughter, Laila, treats her mother, Faten, in a bad way.
They meet, for the first time in 20 years, when Faten falls upon Laila in Cairo, but fails to return home in Tanta on the same day because of the nighttime curfew.
Twenty years earlier Faten kills Laila’s father. The girl still remembers this very vividly and cannot forgive her mother who pays dearly for this by spending 20 years in jail.
The visit Faten pays Laila in Cairo takes place after the mother gets out of the prison.
On that night 20 years ago, Faten deprives Laila of her father and her mother at one and the same time.
However, Faten does not tell Laila why she killed her father.
On that bloody night, Faten sees her husband harassing Laila, who was young at the time. She cannot control her anger, goes to the kitchen, grabs a knife and stabs the man to death.
Nonetheless, all through the 12 hours of the curfew, Faten’s kind nature comes out to light and Laila notices this kindness in her mother.
This causes her to show sympathy to the old woman before the end of the film.
Ramses started writing the script of this film in 2017 after reading repeated cases of domestic violence in the papers.
“There was what amounted to an explosion of cases of violence against women at a short period of time,” Ramses said.
All these cases had one thing in common: silence.
Ramses said victims of rape, harassment and violence usually fall silent for fear of being disgraced.
“Nevertheless, these cases blow up in everybody’s face when they morph into murders,” Ramses said.
However, what makes people like Ramses feel sorry is that these acts of rape or harassment are not usually as criminalised as the crimes they cause.
One time, Ramses read in the papers about a woman who defended her son’s rape of his sister.
Such a defense drives Ramses crazy, even more than the rape itself.
“These incidents raise a huge number of questions,” Ramses said.
‘Curfew’ was shown at the 47th and 48th editions of the Film Society Festival last week.
Shahin won the ‘Best Actress’ Award for her role in the film at the 42nd edition of Cairo International Film Festival.
Ramses believes some laws have to be changed, especially those dealing with violence against women.
Before this, he says, there has to happen a change of the way society views the victims of this violence.
Society views these people as ‘culprits’, he adds, even as they might be originally ‘victims’.
“The way society judges incidents of rape causes the victims to feel ashamed to speak out,” Ramses said.
“This amounts to complicity, making this judgment part of the problem,” he added.
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