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The Shadow of Cairo: The Female Superhero Taking Egyptian Cinema by Storm

November 3, 2020

“Egypt killed my mom” are not exactly words one would expect to hear from a child, but this memorable opening line from The Shadow of Cairo (2020) probably rings true for many Egyptians irrespective of age. The occasional brutality of living in Egypt is indeed one of the great mysteries of life, but for little Maya, the protagonist of the film, it is not as complicated as all that. Directed by up-and-coming Egyptian filmmaker Tara Shehata, The Shadow of Cairo follows the story of Maya (beautifully portrayed by Yasmina El Abd), a young girl who becomes a vigilante who hunts down sexual harassers in the streets of Cairo following the death of her mother, a tragedy she blames on Egypt’s many social ills. “A friend once told me that he thinks Egypt killed his mom. I was very surprised when I heard that statement coming from him, it just felt very odd to me to kind of blame a whole country for the death of a parent. But then the more [he] talked about it, the more [I understood] why he would think that. So that was the sentence that…


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