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Two films on Islamism or more appropriately terrorism.
One starred by and financed by Adel Imam, the other is a private production
Short description of "The Closed Door":
Closed Doors is a work of social realism.13 Purely in terms of how it looks, it makes a startling contrast with Terrorist. The contrived enlightenment/backwardness dichotomy signalled by lighting in Terrorist is replaced in Closed Doors by a perceptive juxtaposition of the misery and confusion of lower middle-class Egyptians with an exploitative and callous upper class. At the center of the story is an adolescent boy living in a marginal rooftop apartment with his divorced mother. Their neighbor is a prostitute who toys with the boy's emerging sexuality. The dishonor of having an unprotected working mother causes horrendous conflicts in his mind. His school, far from being a refuge from the chaos of his personal life, is a place of violence and exploitation. Tardy pupils are routinely beaten as they enter the school grounds. Nationalism, the glue that holds Terrorist together, is a cruel joke as the students are made to recite meaninglessly "Long live the Arab Republic of Egypt" over and over in their morning assembly. Furthermore, all material comfort seems, from this class perspective, to be associated with foreign provenance, particularly the Arab Gulf countries.
Short description of "The Terrorist":
The Terrorist is a remake of a 1961 film titled In Our House There Is a Man (Barakat 1961). The earlier film was also a conversion narrative in which a fugitive (a killer of an Egyptian collaborator with the British) converts his hosts. The host family is secular and middle class, but apolitical, hence the point of the film is the fugitive's success in converting them to the nationalist cause. The family of In Our House There Is a Man is well aware of who the fugitive is and what he has done. Whereas the earlier film argues that violence in the nationalist cause is acceptable, The Terrorist paints violence in the Islamist cause as illegitimate. In Our House There Is a Man is broadcast often on television. Critics did not miss the similarities in the two films, and it is likely that many viewers were aware of them.10 The conversion to secularism in The Terrorist happens during a soccer match between the Egyptian national team and Zimbabwe in the qualifying rounds for the World Cup. Hence the two conversion narratives in The Terrorist and In Our House There Is a Man are linked by nationalism.
From what I can gather Adel Imam's film was financed by him alone but in coordination with government propaganda during the Eid el-Fitir, also a previously banned film of Adel Imam's was shown in 15 theaters that season along side 18 theaters showing "The Terrorist".
I have seen "The Terrorist" and could tell my the cinematography that it was propaganda. My husband was eating it up like a lemming.
I think I might've seen "The Closed Door" but without subtitles, and it sounds like a higher quality plot over all.
Anyone else see the irony between these two films?
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