Where are Egypt’s street children disappearing?

A scene from Ibrahim El Batout’s El Ott.

It took two years and $900,000 for Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim El Batout to bring his latest movie, El Ott, from script to screen. The 92-minute film, partially funded by Abu Dhabi’s Sanad, had its world premiere at the ongoing Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) on Monday night and it was again screened at Vox Marina Mall on Wednesday.

The story is a brave one, inspired by the reality of street children in Egypt, a “problem” that El Batout feels had been ignored for far too long. “We have a problem with street kids and we have definitely a problem of how we deal with them, so it became an element in my film,” he told Khaleej Times.

“It is something that has been developing for years, but we were turning our attention away from it. It has accumulated and the result now is that we have four million children on the streets and we have to do something about it.”

The film tackles the issue of street children through the eyes of its main character, small-time Egyptian gangster El Ott, played with great intensity by Amr Waked. He is both divorced from his wife Salma and estranged from family after his daughter Amina was mysteriously kidnapped and lost in Cairo.

When El Ott finds out that Fathi, a human and organ trafficking mobster, has recently kidnapped street children from his neighbourhood in order to sell their organs, the news consumes him and fuels his anger for what might have become of his own lost daughter.

Thus, El Ott decides to destroy Fathi and put an end to his butchery. A fascinating series of events unfolds. El Ott, along with his brother Ghagary, begins a journey through the underworld, confronting their own demons as they struggle to take down Fathi and his cohorts.

A case study for film director El Batout, El Ott is a complex character, somewhat likable, despite his flaws.

“I don’t see people as good and bad, I see people as people. We all have positive and negative, we all have good and evil, dark and light, so the characters I have are never polar characters, except for the drug trafficker, who is totally negative,” he explained.

Entirely filmed in Egypt, the locations themselves take the viewers on a journey of discovery, from the deep south, home to the Abidos Temple and to legends of Isis and Osiris, to the capital in the north, Cairo. It is a symbolic contrast between the filth of the underworld and the majesty of Egypt’s great civilisation and a thin line not to lose sight of the storytelling.

“With the script, I have to grasp the attention and maintain it till the end of the film. The main challenge was to keep the rhythm of the film and keep it entertaining for the viewer to not move away from it,” said El Batout.

Although a veteran filmmaker, El Batout is one of Egypt’s fresh breeze of film making, bringing new, modern and a personal style to the industry.

“It’s true there was a period in Egypt’s film industry when quantity took over quality, but we are moving out of it. We see more movies that are different, more films that are economically successful, films that do not have to be very commercial to be successful because the budget of making films has come down with the availability of cameras and filming equipment. Making a movie now costs anything between $7,000 to billions,” he pointed out.

Starting with a degree in physics from the American University, Cairo, in 1985, the award-winning El Batout worked abroad as documentary director, producer and cameraman from 1987 to 2004, specialising in war zone documentaries for TV.

On his return to Egypt in 2004, he made his feature debut with Ithaki, in 2005. His other notable films include Eye of the Sun (2008), Hawy (2010) and the widely acclaimed Winter of Discontent (2012). El Ott, his latest, is part of the ADFF’s Narrative Competition.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com