Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Egypt permits film on Arab female sexuality
Agence France-Presse Cairo, May 18
CAIRO, May 18 (AFP) - The Egyptian authorities have now granted permission to a Lebanese-born French director Jocelyne Saab to make a film here about Arab female sexuality, Saab said Sunday.
"Egyptian censors have accepted my film," Saab told AFP by telephone from the south of France, where she is attending the annual Cannes film festival.
"Filming will begin in the next few months," she said in a brief conversation, adding that the Egyptian-French financed movie would star Egyptian actor Ahmed Zaki and Tunisian actress Hind Sabry.
Saab told AFP in February that she had lodged an appeal against Egypt's censorship committee over its decision to reject the script of her movie entitled "Dunia", a girl's name that also means "life" in Arabic.
"It touches on taboo issues such as love and sexual relationships, female pleasure and excision," Saab said at the time.
The censorship committee decided the movie would "harm Egypt and Islam and incite depravation," she said.
Female circumcision is a touchy subject in Egypt where it continues to be widely practised in poor and rural areas despite a 1997 ban and concerted efforts by the government and international organizations to root it out, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) said recently.
Saab said female circumcision was not the focus of the movie, but rather a starting point for the drama that tells of 23-year-old Dunia, torn between the modern world and tradition, and wanting to become a professional dancer.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2002. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without prior permission