Workers at the Egyptian Food Bank prepare food to distribute to people who suffer from poverty in Cairo in April 2020. Photo: AFP

Egyptian movie Feathers has drawn critical acclaim abroad but its unsettling depiction of poverty in the Arab world's most populous country has sparked heated debate at home.

Veteran actor Sherif Moneer, who walked out of a screening at Egypt's El Gouna Film Festival earlier in October, has led a patriotic backlash against the film for "presenting Egypt negatively."

But others have praised director Omar El Zohairy for shedding light in the film on a genuine social problem in a way that is both artistic and constructive.

On late Friday at the closing ceremony of the fifth edition of the El Gouna Film Festival, Feathers won the award for best Arab narrative film.

"For me any artistic work will always generate differing views," a beaming Zohairy told AFP, addressing the issue after claiming the prize.

"The film is more important than any award," the director said. 

Feathers tells the story of Om Mario (Mario's mother), a poor woman from the rural south who struggles to make ends meet after her husband is transformed into a chicken.

The absurdist narrative is performed by an amateur cast, mostly from the country's Coptic Christian minority.

It became the first Egyptian feature film to win a major award at the star-studded Cannes Film Festival in 2021.

The film's opponents, who also include pro-government lawmakers, accuse Zohairy of creating an exaggerated image of squalor that bears no relation to contemporary Egypt.

"The slums that we had and those that are disappearing now are better than the scenes represented in the film," Moneer said in a television interview last week.

"The state has made great strides in eliminating slums and moving people to excellent alternative furnished housing... We are in a new republic now."

Loyalist MP Mahmud Badr took to Twitter to condemn the "making of a movie depicting your country as if there was no development."

Lawyer Samir Sabry filed a lawsuit against the film's producers for "insulting Egypt and Egyptians."



'Shedding light'

But the rush of well-to-do Egyptians falling over each other to defend government policy and national pride over a movie about poverty was widely lampooned on social media.

Economic rights researcher Osama Diab said the film's depiction of poverty was by no means exaggerated based on the government's own figures.

Around one in three of Egypt's 100 million people live below the poverty line.

Diab said poverty reduction had never been a priority for government economic policy, which had been set in agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

Egypt adopted harsh austerity measures in 2016 to secure a $12 billion loan from the IMF, including a devaluation of the Egyptian pound.

In September, the IMF hailed the country as one of the few emerging markets that had weathered the pandemic and experienced positive growth.

"The IMF 2016 program only speaks of mitigation of the shocks caused by economic reforms whereas they don't speak of poverty alleviation. It was never a goal in itself," Diab said.

Film critic Tarek El-Shenawy, who saw the first screening of Feathers described the backlash against the film as "vulgar and silly."

"There's no artistic production that can actually tarnish Egypt's reputation," Shenawy told AFP.

He praised the movie as artistically "great" and in no way insulting to Egypt.

AFP