‘Contradictions’ led to making of ‘Downtown Girls’

The movie, in short is a tale of two girls from downtown Cairo, the capital city of Egypt. Both the girls who hold the prominent characters of the film are from the middle class families who work in the main city to be a supporting member of the family.

While one of the characters Jumana is a salesgirl in a lingerie shop, her friend Yasmin is a daughter of a railway driver and works as a hairdresser. Yasmin lives in Al-Maasara, Jumana in Helwan Both the girls reach their working destinations by boarding their respective subways, daily. Though modern in their outlook and lifestyle both of the girls are aware of the facts about their whereabouts and accept the same, not willingly though.

In Downtown Girls (Banat West El-Balad), Mohamed Khan with his real life wife, screenwriter Wessam Soliman and the rising stars Menna Shalaby, Hend Sabry, Khaled Aboul Naga and Mohamed Nagaty to present the daily lives of the upward looking girls from the distant suburbs, their unique dreams, aspirations and desires which seldom comes out, due to the pressure of the conservationists societies.

Bubbly as both these characters were, there were occasionally head on with the established customs of the society and sometimes, surprisingly even with their own selves. These contradictions of ‘two types’ raised enough confusion to understand the real concept of the movie which I later resolved by talking to Wessam Soliman, the scriptwriter of Downtown Girls, herself who also happens to be the wife of the director of the movie.

Says Wessam, the scriptwriter of the movie, this film is about the difference between the upper Egypt and the downtown areas. As is evident in the movie there are lots of contradictions in the Egyptian society, which we in the movie have tried to put forward through these two downtown girls.

Now the contradictions, explains Wessam, are not only limited to the societal ones, but are also encompassing the contradictions of the self, like the self is divided between the two parts. Like the man with whom Jumana goes around, takes the girl to his apartment even as Jumana is quite reluctant to follow the man to his home.

Not only that, the lady very cleverly checks the physical advances of the lad, even though her ‘self’ is not particularly averse to the idea of the man. Now these self-contradictions stop these ladies from going overboard in their gesture of challenging the mediocre values of the conservationist ideas, even as they crave to do exactly the opposite of what they feel deep in their hearts.

Similarly, elaborates Wessam, the way these two lady protagonists introduce themselves to the two stranger men, with their false identities and keep pretending the same for quite a long period also illustrates the very contradiction which moved me and my husband Mohamed to inspire for the movie which came out as Downtown Girls (Banat Wist Al-Balad)