The 45th International Women’s Film Festival opened on Friday March 24 at the Maison des arts de Créteil, near Paris. The only film in competition from the African continent is called “Sahbety” (“My Girl Friend”). Between drama and laughter, the Egyptian director Kawthar Younis shakes the certainties of genres and of an entire society.
In an Egyptian society sclerotic in many respects, how to break the constraints linked to gender and cross the barriers of moral taboos that make love life impossible ? Egyptian director Kawthar Younis uses the metaphor of impossible love to make visible the hypocrisy of a society obsessed with keeping up appearances.
The film starts in all innocence. In a house of which we know nothing, a young woman takes the elevator and rings at a door on the sixth floor. ” Who is here ? the mother asks her daughter inside. ” It’s my friend Alia, mom. » Arriving in Sarah’s room to work on their « project », they kiss each other…tenderly. The ploy worked. Because behind the seductive silhouette of Salia hides Ali, disguised as a woman to spend the night on the sly with his girlfriend.
A room transformed into a society in miniature
In 17 minutes, the short film transforms Sarah’s small bedroom into a miniature society where the trap also closes in on those who set it. Disguised as a girl, Ali loses all his privileges as a man. Made up, a wig on his head, he suffers the banal fate of a woman living in patriarchy. And even his relationship with Sarah begins to waver…
Through large shots showing the transformations of Ali’s face, Kawthar Younis makes us understand : everything loses ground. Unaware of everything, the mother enters the love nest without knocking to bring melon and comfort to the “ girls “. Ali is forced to realize how ridiculous it is to be forced to smoke on the sly in the bathroom when you are a woman. Sarah finds herself deeply disturbed by the troubled gender of her feminized friend. And all the rules of society explode when the father, the embodiment of patriarchy, but blinded and seduced by Ali alias Alia’s fake breasts and lipstick, begins to make advances…
Kawthar Younis, a female filmmaker
Forty years later Tootsie, Oscar-winning film by Sydney Pollack with Dustin Hoffman playing a woman to short-circuit his bad reputation as an actor and land a role, the Egyptian director offers us a successful variation on the theme of gender transposed into our contemporary era. Even if each shot of this film shot in Arabic breathes Egypt, Kawthar Younis makes the subject as powerful as it is universal by precisely avoiding pointing the finger at a country, a city or a religion. A cinematic feat already rewarded with the Special Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the Cairo International Film Festival. And obviously, this film, which was the first Egyptian short film in the running at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, has its place in the competition of the International Women’s Film Festival in Créteil.
According to a report published by Unesco in 2021, Egypt has more than 480 cinema screens, and between 20 and 30% of jobs in the film and audiovisual industry are held by women. Based in Cairo, Kawthar Younis is also a producer of films, mini-series and television commercials. In 2016, Younis won the audience award at FIPA in Biarritz with his documentary A Present from the Past which had also met with spectacular success in Egypt. She is also co-founder of Rawiyat-Sisters in Film, a collective of women founded in 2020 to create a solidarity network between filmmakers from the Middle East, North Africa, its diaspora and refugee communities.
► My Girl Friendby Kawthar Younis, will be screened at the International Women’s Film Festival on March 25 at 1 p.m. and March 30 at 5 p.m.