Revolutionary road

Cairo is deceptively calm, says Egyptian film-maker Mohamed Diab. ‘People were so scared from the fighting in the streets that now all they want is stability at any price,’ he explains. ‘But if you look closely at the situation, it’s worse than it was with Mubarak in charge when it comes to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and human rights.’

It’s not turned out quite how Diab had hoped. In 2010 he directed Cairo 678, a riveting film that in hindsight seemed like a premonition of what was to come. A New Yorker article in 2011 described it as ‘unmistakably a harbinger of [the] revolution’, and commended Diab for ‘vividly portraying how the old system failed repeatedly to address daily indignities and frustrations suffered by ordinary Egyptians, women in particular’. When Tahrir Square erupted in early 2011, Diab became a leading participant (he rejects the term ‘leader’) in the revolts that unseated Mubarak.