Everything Is Gonna Be Alright is the title of a recent documentary film about the viewpoints of Egyptians living in New York and their frustrations with the media and many other things. The documentary portrays the dilemma Egyptians in New York are living. With one part of them being highly patriotic, belonging to the Arab world and believing in its cause, and the other part having experienced the American dream and strongly believing in it, too, they are living with a strong inner conflict every single day. They are living in the United States and enjoying their lives there. Most of them are very content about what they have achieved there and know for a fact that they would have never been able to even come close to such achievements if they had remained in Egypt, but at the same time they feel completely marginalized and biased against as far as the media are concerned.

You Can’t Talk, and You Can’t Remain Silent”

This dilemma and that inner conflict were strongly manifested after the tragic 9/11 attacks. “Our relatives and friends were calling us after the attacks and wondering how come we are not happy for the American defeat. But having been in that same building half an hour before it collapses and realizing that I could have been one of those victims, it was hard to do anything but sympathize with the victims and condemn this tragedy,” said Tamer Ezzat, the director of the film. “Unfortunately, the feelings of rage against the US made people in Arab countries involuntarily happy and proud of what happened. ‘We beat them,’ that is what people said here, but when you are living there, you realize that this is not a football game, it is much more than that. These attacks complicated everything even more and nothing has ever been the same since then.”

“Don’t Worry About a Thing …

Cause Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright”

The documentary shows the frustrations of four Egyptians who have actually made their ways there, not the traditional stereotype that we have about the Egyptian who goes to the United States and washes dishes. "I was trying to show the other side. Those people knew more about their homeland when they went to New York and achieved a lot more than they would have achieved here or anywhere else" said Tamer Ezzat. One of the four characters of the documentary admits that he would have never been able to achieve the success he has achieved in New York, had he been in Egypt or anywhere else.

New York is definitely a dream for every film maker and it is very difficult to avoid filming it if you have the opportunity. When Tamer Ezzat first started shooting, he never expected that the film would make such a big success. “I loved New York so much,” said Ezzat, “and I thought I cannot come back home before shooting something, the streets and the people, and I wanted to demystify the idea that New York is glossy and just full of sky scrapers. New York actually is a city that that is very complicated and very controversial; it has rich neighborhoods and advanced technology, but at the same time its subway has a severe cleanliness problem. It has a strong economy and is a big tourism destination for Americans and foreigners, but many people suffer from improper health care. It is a real, controversial society, and with a lot of problems.”

“Being an Arab with certain views and committed to a certain cause means being aggravated all the time”

The documentary shows that the most common frustration among the four characters is the media and the way they are biased against Arabs, even though the director of the film did not have a preset agenda. It just happened that all of them talked so much about the same issue and thus he decided to make it the central theme of the film. “When I first started shooting the movie, I had a lot in mind. I shot a lot more than what the audience saw in the movie. I had so much going on in my mind, and this is why I shot everything I could,” said Ezzat. “However, when I actually viewed what I had shot and started editing, I found out that so much of what the people I was shooting said and thought was on the same wave length, which is the frustration of these Arabs particularly from the media provocation they are constantly exposed to, and that is what you saw in the movie.”

“Being an Arab with certain views and committed to a certain cause means being aggravated all the time,” said Osama Fakhr, a writer and one of the four characters of the documentary. “I am not talking about the people in the streets or the city itself, but rather about the media and its extremely biased views that refuses to see the other as semi-human even. This aggravates you constantly and does not give you the chance to forget even for a second who you are and where you come from.”

Ezzat shared the same concern as he said, “It is funny because when you are out, people treat you normally and you don’t feel discriminated against or anything. However, when you go back home and watch the TV, you watch all what is being said about Arabs and Muslims and it makes you even scared to go out.”

Osama Abdul Aziz, who works in FOX News, shared his frustration from being on the news-making side and seeing the way brainwashing is carefully planned. “After 9/11 attacks, people here got very patriotic. FOX exploited people’s emotional fragility by constant hammering. We had instructions to mention the events of 9/11 in any news item we broadcast no matter what it was. If you say somebody’s tire has exploded, you have to say it happened after 9/11.”

Despite this, director Ezzat said he did not believe in the conspiracy theory when it comes to media. “The media has a certain momentum,” he said. “It doesn’t work that ABC, NBC, FOX, and all other widely viewed TV stations would say something and then somebody else would just pop up and say that it is all wrong. It just doesn’t work that way, especially at those times when the Americans’ feelings of patriotism have reached a peak.”

When asked if he believed there is something he could do about this provocation, Ezzat said, “The problem is that we as Arabs in general do not have this agenda. Doing something to defend ourselves is not necessarily part of our culture. You always find Arabs being attacked in the media, but nobody is defending and thus they continue attacking, which makes you feel very small and unable to reach the pop culture. And the pop culture is very strongly against the Arabs and we do not have enough awareness how to say ‘this is racism.’ For example, when something happens to a black American, the Jews or even Hispanics, the whole world is turned upside down, so why doesn’t this happen with Arabs?”

While I was watching the documentary, I couldn’t help asking myself repeatedly, “How can this documentary make the kind of impact you want if it is only shown to Egyptians, Arabs, or Americans who are already sympathetic with our cause? How can we reach those who don’t know and not only those who already know?” When I talked about this with Ezzat, he said, “The problem is that documentary is an alternative genre after all, and not one in the mainstream. This is why personally I was shocked—positively of course—with the number of people who actually filled the halls that we were showing in. I made this movie originally for my family and friends, so having it shown in all these places is still a big success. Because documentary films cost much less than narrative commercial ones, getting a number of people to watch it, no matter how small, is still an achievement, unlike commercial films.”

Definitely, all this is subject to change now after the box office hit Fahrenheit 9/11, which broke all the rules and opened the door for documentaries to become part of the mainstream. Also, with the opening of so many news stations, there are a lot of opportunities for documentaries to be viewed on TV. There are still so many issues to deal with, the first being the habits of the viewers themselves, but in a way, we can say that there is a lot of progress in that direction.

The movie was first shown in February 2004 in New York University and Atlanta State University. It was also shown in the Arab Cinema Festival in New York (CinemaEast) organized by ArtEast, an organization that promotes and encourages Middle Eastern artists. It was shown in the United Nations (for its people). In Egypt, the movie has been shown in Gomhoria Theater as part of the Egyptian National Cinema Festival, El Sakia, Goethe Institute, and the Artistic Creativity Center in the Cairo Opera House. The film is now taking part in Ismailia Short Film Festival and is intended to participate in Arab International Film Festival (Cinemayat) in California.

What makes this documentary really special is the novelty of its language. There is nobody screaming or carrying signs. Instead, there are four very academic, professional, analytical, and objective Egyptians, most of whom are actually in love with New York, sharing their frustrations and talking in a way that the other can easily understand. The film portrays the complex love-hate relationship Egyptians living in New York have with America. Most probably the success of transforming the exact right image is due to the filmmaker himself having been one of those people. Thus the film talks about concepts and viewpoints that he is familiar with. And obviously the film is made by somebody who is absolutely in love with New York. “I wanted to show the real life, which is complex. In real life, one plus one does not equal two,” said Ezzat. “We have so many contradictory relationships, there are so many love-hate relationships in our lives. For example, we hate so many things about Egypt, but we still love it so much. We talk about the inflation, about the unemployment and the traffic and corruption, but try getting a foreigner to tell them something negative about Egypt, they will get furious.” Even though the documentary was a little long, it was very well made, with a very rich content, and it definitely made me fall in love with New York.

* Mohammad Shawky is a graduating senior in the American University in Cairo majoring in business administration, but he is more passionate about education and learning, social development, performing arts, and creative writing.