Post date: Jan 10, 2014 3:46:17 PM
Documentary film director, Jehane Noujaim, talks about her experiences making "The Square," which documents the lives of a handful of the revolutionaries in the Egyptian uprising.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (REUTERS) - Three years after Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim waded intoCairo's Tahrir Square to document the early rumblings of the revolution, the story behind her latest film, "The Square," continues, with the final outcome of the years-long uprising unclear.
For the moment, the military is in charge, the Muslim Brotherhood has been driven from governance, and protesters are being put on trial.But despite the ongoing nature of the situation in Egypt, Noujaim knew right from the beginning that it was a story that needed to be told.
"When I got to the square there were people of all different backgrounds; men, women, different classes, religious, secular. And they were all there basically having a hand in the future of their lives and their country for the first time, expressing how they felt politically about the country, discussing its future, and it was just this magical environment, and I knew that I wanted to figure out how I wanted to make a film about this," Noujaim told Reuters TV.
"The Square" will make its debut to a wide audience on January 17 via streaming company Netflix's 40 million subscribers. The film follows the lives of several participants in the mass protests in Tahrir Square, putting a human face on a movement that involved millions.
"What we were watching was the beginnings of democracy, you know, if you imagine, people never had these kinds of conversations in public for 30 years under this dictatorship, and here you had people learning how to have these conversations about the future of a country, political conversations, where the learning is that we can have a disagreement and be from radically different backgrounds, yet still be able to talk and be able to have a conversation about the future," Noujaim said.
She added that one of the difficult parts about making the film was how the political situation in Egypt continued to evolve. Her original cut of "The Square" ended when former president Mohamed Mursi was elected into office. But when the protests sprang back up and Mursi was removed from power, she knew that the film wasn't finished.
"Everybody was back in the streets because Mursi was using democracy to, using the tools of democracy to basically create another dictatorship, this time a dictatorship which relied on manipulating people through religion. And so all of our characters where back in the streets at the palace, basically protesting this and we knew that the story had not ended," Noujaim explained.
"The Square" has already won the 'World Cinema - Documentary' award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, as well as 'Best Documentary' at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Now, there's even buzz about the film being on a short list for an Oscar nomination, but for the moment, Noujaim says she doesn't want to spoil her chances.
"I don't want to jinx anything, You know, we are absolutely thrilled though about the kind of support that the film is getting, and one of the most exciting screenings that we've had actually was at a high school in Utah where a bunch of kids came up afterwards and they said we've never followed the Middle East, we've never really paid much attention to what's going on in Egypt, but this is not a film about that, this is a film about change and changing, you know, what you believe in," she said.
"The Square" will premiere on Netflix on January 17.