An ugly portrait of Egypt's street kids

CAIRO — "Cairo is very beautiful from above; I wish it were as beautiful from below," said little Mokhna, contemplating the glamour of the city's night life while standing on a hill on the outskirts. However, the lights, the posh facade, the glitter of urban modernity seen from the hilltop do not match the teenager's version of Cairo, where she and her family endure poverty, insecurity and abuse.

Mokhna is one of the characters of the Egyptian director Ahmed Atef's recently released movie "Al-Ghaba" (The Jungle). The film is an unsettling portrait of Cairo today, brutally exposing the disheartening conditions of those living at the edges of a society that has become highly polarized.

The 90-minute movie was screened for the first time at Egypt's major annual cultural event, the Cairo International Film Festival, which wrapped earlier this month.

The director chose as his vantage point the phenomenon of street children, who languish in disarray in all corners of Cairo, facing physical and moral abuse.

"I was driven by the fact that the child is a weak being by definition, let alone if this weak being is raped and beaten," Atef said. "He would need somebody to help him raise his voice high."

However, the director had other personal motivations. Waiting anxiously for his audience's feedback outside the theater where his movie was screened, Atef, who calls himself "a fighter by nature," tells the story behind his third feature film.

"One of the forces that drove me to make the movie is the oppression I was subjected to when I was at the university," said Atef, who has been pursuing a dual career of movie critic and filmmaker for more than a decade. Besides his few feature movies, Atef produced eight documentaries.

Seeds of an idea

As a graduating senior at Egypt's Cinema Institute, Atef produced a 13-minute documentary on the daily plight of Cairo's population of street kids for his final project in 1993. However, Atef's short piece elicited too much stir in his academic circles, until it eventually was banned for its political undertones.

"Back then, I stormed into the office of the Institute Administration Council," Atef said, "and vowed in front of the institute's board that I would turn this documentary into a feature movie one day and prove to them that what they did was unfair to street children who deserved their support.

"Today, after 14 years, I made the movie."