If the world-shaking changes in Egypt that began on Jan. 25, 2011, took dictator Hosni Mubarak by surprise, they were a shock even to the people who helped topple him. “I myself expected, for three hours [to be] doing this thing, then go, change clothes, have dinner and go to a movie,” says one activist interviewed in “Uprising,” a documentary about what became a revolution.
“But it didn’t work like this,” he adds, with wry understatement.
Fredrik Stanton’s film is video footage compiled of the tumult, often shot by the very people taking part in the protests. And there are many interviews with Egyptians, most particularly the young people who poured into the streets of Cairo to protest decades of repression and corruption under the Mubarak regime. There’s nothing technically daring about the film; there doesn’t have to be. The daring comes from people like the former Muslim Brotherhood youth leader who, after taking a rubber bullet point-blank in the head, was treated by a Christian doctor and immediately returned to the demonstration.
The film goes only to Mubarak’s abrupt exit, and confines the ongoing struggle over democracy in Egypt to a final title card. Still, it is a stirring piece of work. For years, American newscasts and films have shown the “Arab street” in a profoundly negative light, as bloodthirsty, reactionary hordes. When “Uprising” shows masses of Arabs marching for freedom, and using Muslim prayer as a form of peaceful protest, that in itself is a bit revolutionary.