The Netflix Movie Ashab wala Aaz (Do we know each other or not in French) is a hit with audiences in Arab countries where it tops the charts. Adapted from an Italian feature film Perfect Sconosciuti (“Perfect strangers”), he tells of a dinner with friends. To spice up their evening, they decide to abide by a few rules: each guest puts their phone on the table and shares calls and messages received with the other participants. Of course, the evening turns to drama with cascading revelations. Unfaithful husbands, wives too, and then the homosexuality of one of the characters.
Too much for some Internet users and social network users who denounced the alcohol present throughout the meal, the conversations about sex and of course the representation of a gay character. The only Egyptian actress in the cast, star Mona Zaki is particularly targeted by this flood of online criticism.
At the head of this crusade for the protection of good morals, the Egyptian deputy Moustafa Bakri. “This film defends the phenomenon of homosexuality, he denounces in an Egyptian TV talkshow. We also see more than twenty pornographic scenes, so yes it is shocking for Egyptian families.” Obviously, there are no pornographic scenes in this film. But the MP is offering nothing less than banning Netflix. One proposal among many others.
You should know that this type of controversy frequently agitates the Parliament as well as the media controlled by the regime, without any measure being taken. For example, last month, the Egyptian deputies had found the time to debate on the possibility or not of performing Jean-Paul Sartre’s play in Egypt. The respectful whore. The conservatism of parliamentarians is beyond doubt. The very people who voted in 2018 for a law on cybercrime penalizing “attacks on Egyptian family values”, a text that had led to the imprisonment of several users of the TikTok application.
But this conservative vision is however far from unanimous, especially among Egyptian youth. Regarding the Netflix production, many of these young people have expressed on social networks all the good things they think about this film, a modern representation, according to them, of society as it is, and not as some would like. whether.
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Perfect Sconosciuti also has its French version released in 2018 under the title The game.