The Square (2013)

How often do we witness history in the moment and have a camera handy to document it?   The Square follows a group of young people who understood the significance of the moment they were living in.  This is a film that will be shown in history classrooms across the world in fifteen years time when journalists and historians can look back at the Arab Spring with hindsight; and this will only have been made possible by the brave, young, revolutionaries of Egypt.  Throughout the film over a span of two years, we observe the passion in their voices and actions in fighting for a cause they truly believed in.

The footage is very intimate, bringing the viewer right in the middle of Tahrir Square, into the tents in peaceful times and fleeing the military in violent times.  The camerawork is fantastic, especially considering the hectic and dangerous circumstances under which it was done.  The shots of the shear number of angry people, with their different ideologies put aside, coming together to sit-in at Tahrir Square were incredibly moving.  Even the graffiti art is extraordinary.  The well-organized structure of the documentary has three distinct parts: protest against Mubarak, against the military, and against the Muslim Brotherhood.  The filmmakers make the effort to show all sides of the revolution from the viewpoints of the military, Brotherhood, and revolutionaries.

The revolution was brought about by the younger generation that was fed up with the Mubarak regime.  This is significant because they are the future.  Change is brought about by the large middle class; today's revolutionaries are just regular people.  Social media outlets like YouTube allowed the messages to disseminate quickly to millions of people.  This very much was a revolution of the people: the film shows what the revolution meant to individual people, from an international foreign-born star to a Muslim Brother.  It shows that revolution is long, tough and complex; it is far beyond just politics.  One of the big concerns of the film is that the revolutionaries were not organized enough.  The brutal truth was that they could not offer an alternative to the regime they sought to topple.  The film never shies away from the truth.