Film tackles thuggery in Egypt

Cairo: The Cinema Club of Coffee Rich in downtown Cairo hosted last week an exclusive show of the documentary “Baltagia (thugs) Factory”, directed by Mona Al Iraqi, an investigative journalist. Through real footage, the film tackles the problem of thuggery in Egypt.

The documentary’s idea is pretty unique as the film penetrated the thugs’ community, where groups of women, men, and children have been involved in crime to the extent that it becomes an essential part of their lives.

Al Iraqi surprised her audience, who happened to be members of the Egyptian intellectual elite with a different angle of Cairo.

The director meets Emad in a series of hasty visits during his trips to and from prison.

“The belt of slums” surrounding Cairo, which includes 54 hazardous areas with 15 million people, according to official statements that were quoted on the film, tends to be the real culprit in a “thugs industry”.

In “Baltagia Factory”, it seems reasonable for Wedad, a brave girl living in this world, not to hesitate to marry an addicted (Wahid Bershama) to protect herself from oppression and rape. She considers him to be her prince charming. In the film, she says bye as he goes to steal a motorcycle, as if he was a hero martyr.

It seems also normal that Wahid’s mother accepts willingly her son’s shocking announcement that he was ready to kill any human being on the earth for 50,000 pounds.

The documentary features a woman who is hired to commit any crime, except for prostitution, including distortion of someone’s face by an erosive acid. She justifies her actions saying “it may be God’s revenge for a wrongdoing or may be a divine wisdom, not known for people.”

Many Egyptians feel proud that they participated in the peaceful 25th January revolution. But, the feelings of slum-dwellers towards the revolution are related to events of theft and looting that accompanied it and not the revolution itself.

It’s not the fall of Mubarak’s regime that made them happy, but the fall of Al Fayoum Governorate prison (100km south of Cairo) and the breaking doors of its wards that gave prisoners opportunity to escape. The documentary includes real –but- mythological footage showing the film’s hero Emad escaping from prison, where he was sentenced to six years.

The film re-affirms that the thug industry will continue, resulting in more criminals if the issue of slum-dwellers is neglected.

In the discussion that followed the show, Al Iraqi said: “It took me seven months to produce this film where I used to live with thieves, murderers and drug dealers, I ended by having 120 hours filming their real life.”

“Most of what appeared in the movie is not only realistic but real. I showed the events as they are, except for some situations which might have broken the law or considered as collusion”, Al Iraqi added.

When asked by Gulf News if she had manipulated a scene that shows kids dancing with knives in front of their parents, Mona said, “anyone who attends wedding parties in Cairo slums knows well that the scene was real, in these parties you can see what’s beyond reality.”