Lamo’akhza Reveals Fissures in Egyptian Society
BY NOUREDEEN AHMED
The new film Lamo’akhza (Excuse my French) delves deep into the core of social ills that affect contemporary Egyptian society and may leave some audience members disturbed.
Director Amr Salama (Asma 2011) uses the innocence of primary school children to dissect religious and social prejudices.
Youngster Ahmed Dash plays Hany Abdullah, a privileged child of a family that ranks itself among Egypt’s elites.
His life is comprised of going to expensive schools staffed with foreign teachers and spending time with his friends at the local “in” club.
Tragedy strikes when his father, played by Hani Adel, suddenly succumbs to a heart attack and Hany spirals downward from riches to rags, with the extravagances of yesterday no longer affordable today.
Forced to relocate to a public school, where the elite would not tread, Hany is a stranger in a strange land; he finds far too little in common with his new classmates.
The social differences are highlighted here; the way Hany reacts to a pretty new blonde teacher is in stark difference to the bewilderment, and somewhat sexist reaction of his classmates.
Furthermore, he is too afraid to reveal his Christian heritage; everyone is led to assume that he is a Muslim because of his surname.
He might have been in another world. Salama is able to not only depict the religious delineations that at one point could have fragmented Egyptian society, but also makes a statement about the status of the country’s public school system.
Hany drudges along, happy to keep his identity hidden until a brawl with a classmate forces his mother (played by Kinda Allouch) to be called to the school.
Surprise, surprise … Hany, the good Muslim boy who has fallen from elite to commoner is found out when his mother arrives, cross hanging down her chest and all.
Hany goes through another plummet – fall from Muslim acceptance and commonality.
He is teased, ostracized and has to endure religious slurs (“Koftis, koftis” – a derogatory term used to describe Coptic Christians).
Hany’s mother begins to feel the pressures of an intolerant society, and starts to look for ways to leave Egypt to Canada.
Yet again, Salama is able to successfully weave the family’s plight into factual accounts of tens of thousands of Coptic Christians who left Egypt since the populist uprising in January 2011.
This film is worth your pound, and for those who may be living with their heads in the clouds about the push-and-shove tensions that grip class divisions in Egypt, this is a wake-up call.
On the IMDB website, the movie got a rating of 8.1 out of 10, which is considered an excellent rating.
