Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Cairo 678: Sexually Harassed Woman Becomes Vigilante

Incredible movie. I didn't know what to expect when I watched this on Amazon Prime. It's a powerful tale of how three different women handle the growing sexual harassment in Egypt.

Woman one is harassed on a daily basis, on every bus, on the streets she walks. She dresses as dowdy as possible, covers herself head to toe. Unfortunately Egypt's bus system has men and women crowded extremely close together and some men seem to think it's a sport to grab women standing near them. Some of the men go so far as to unzip their own pants.

We see how her low opinion of the men around her in general begins to affect her marriage.

And then one day, she decides no man is going to touch her and get away with it again...and she becomes a vigilante, stabbing stabbing the perps in the crotch.

Her path crosses with that of two other women. One is a wealthy one who was (I think) raped at a football game. Her husband didn't handle the situation well, so hers is a story about emotional abandonment as well. About how, whether people intend it or not, they can punish us for being assaulted.

The third story is a the first woman in Egypt to file a sexual harassment claim. If she continues the claim, she will lose her fiance.

To avoid spoilers, I'm not going to get into further detail about what they do. The movie follows them, their troubles, their emotions, their families' reactions, their everyday life as well as that of a detective as he tries to track down the vigilante on the buses. I was pleasantly surprised by him and his actions.

Long review short, this is an empowering movie, about the different ways women can take action and seek justice. It's also extremely enlightening about the situation women in Egypt face on a daily basis. Though this occurred (this is based on a true story) in 2009, when you think about it, it wasn't that long ago.


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