Out On The Street (Barra fel share') (Trailer)

Feature documentary

In an acting workshop in a working-class Cairo neighborhood, 10 men recount episodes of exploitation, humiliation and injustice; their stories centre on the privatization of a factory but invariably extend to harassment by police and Egypt’s corrupt justice system. The workers then reenact these scenarios, creating a biting exposé of worker conditions.

While the film is not about the 2011 revolution, many of the issues that triggered the uprising in 2011 are central to the film. The waves of worker strikes in the decade prior to 2011 were a major part of the growing popular discontent with the Mubarak regime and were often in response to the privatization of state-owned companies and the accompanying reduction in workers' pay and conditions.

Workers mobilized as part of the January 2011 uprising and continued to mobilize after Mubarak stepped down, achieving an increase in the minimum wage. In the wake of the military coup in 2013, workers' pay and working conditions deteriorated as a result of austerity policies and ongoing privatization, whilst workers' strikes and protests were met with high levels of repression by authorities.

Directed by Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk

The Museum of Modern Art published via YouTube.com

Arabic/English

25/09/2015