If there is one song that is immediately associated with the military coup of 3 July 2013, then it is “Teslam El-Ayadi” ("Bless Your Hands" or "May the Hands be Safe"). This song — or “operetta” — was written by singer Mostafa Kamel and widely played…

Egyptian novelist and writer Ahdaf Soueif narrates her history of Cairo and her journey through the first few months of the 2011 revolution, highlighting the intersections of the personal and the political in the context of these momentous events.

This crime drama film is set during the height of clashes between security forces and protesters. A forensic doctor, suffering from alcoholism, examines a body at the morgue and is struck by something unusual. His report provokes much anger and he…

While tens of thousands of protestors gathered in cities across Egypt in January 2011, poor villagers in the country’s south followed the tense situation on their TV screens and in the daily newspapers. From the overthrow of Mubarak to the fall of…

Director Tamer El Said and actor Khalid Abdalla discuss their film 'In the Last Days of the City' following its North American Premiere at New Directors/New Films 2016, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

Ramy Essam shot to fame during the 18 days of the Tahrir Square sit-in in 2011. This song, based on the slogans of the protesters, calling on former president Hosni Mubarak to leave, became one of the most iconic songs of the revolution.
Following…

A feature documentary originally planned as a three-part television series. Through the life of an Egyptian family, it covers the six months between Mubarak’s stepping down and the first parliamentary elections (November-December 2011), prelude to…

Sadat and Fifty are very successful mahragan musicians. This song is encouraging men not to sexually harass women. In 2013, there was a high incidence of mass sexual assault directed against female protesters. Moreover, a 2013 study by UN Women,…

This award-winning novel, originally published in Arabic in 2013, is set in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, yet is clearly relevant to post-revolution Egypt and life under the regime of Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. A centralized authority known as the…

In this song, rock band Cairokee put to music “Al-ahzan al-‘adeyya” (Ordinary Sorrows, 1981) by legendary vernacular poet Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi. Abnoudi's poem paints a picture of defiance in the of face of oppression: 'We’re the people who get hit…