Two Egyptian Women Redefining Cinema

A public swimming pool, reeking of chlorine and cheap sunscreen, became a battleground for the soul of a neighborhood. This is the world Kamla Abou Zekry cracks open in her 2016 feature, *Yom lel Setat*. A Day for Women. It’s a simple, almost banal premise. One day a week, the local pool is reserved for women only.

But in Zekry’s hands, that premise becomes a scalpel, dissecting the raw nerves of Egyptian society. A day where the suffocating social architecture of their Cairo suburb momentarily dissolves, where women of every age and class—the wealthy, the poor, the pious, the rebellious—can shed their public armor along with their outer garments.

It’s a film that understands the profound liberation found in the mundane; the simple, glorious act of feeling sun on your shoulders without the weight of a male gaze. Zekry doesn’t preach. She observes. She watches as friendships spark and resentments fester in the chlorinated water, revealing the intricate, often invisible, cages of gender segregation and class that persist even in a space designed for freedom.

Then there is the thunderclap of Sandra Nashaat. If Zekry’s work is a quiet, intense character study, Nashaat’s is a commercial blitzkrieg.

She did not quietly deconstruct the system; she stormed the box office and took it hostage. Consider the titles. *Haramiyya fi KG2*. A heist in a kindergarten. *Haramiyya fi Thailand*. The same, but with palm trees. These were not arthouse darlings; they were massive, crowd-pleasing hits that made her one of the most bankable directors in the country.

Her films are slick, fast, and unapologetically commercial, proving that a woman’s vision could not only compete but dominate in the high-stakes arena of popular entertainment. With later blockbusters like the tense thriller *Al Rahina* (The Hostage) and the action-packed *El Maslaha* (The Deal), Nashaat demonstrated a mastery of genre filmmaking that was both technically sharp and wildly entertaining.

Here are two distinct forms of cinematic rebellion, aimed at different targets but born of the same landscape.

One filmmaker uses the potent intimacy of a single location to expose the deep-seated complexities of women's interior lives. The other grabs the mainstream by the collar with high-octane stories, proving a woman can orchestrate car chases and shootouts just as compellingly as any man, if not more so. Abou Zekry’s camera captures the fragile truce between generations sharing a locker room.

A stolen moment of peace. Nashaat’s camera captures the kinetic thrill of a deal gone wrong. A life on the line. They are not just telling stories about women; they are hijacking the narrative of Egyptian cinema, one frame at a time.