The original film .. on the farm everyone is under control

In 2005, my friend, a senior official in the Radio and Television Union, confided to me, warning: “Be careful, everything is recorded.” It was not a big surprise to me, since I knew his relations with the security services, especially the State Security Agency, and the idea of ​​the same recordings being frequent. And the late great writer Muhammad Hassanein Heikal referred to it when Ashraf Marawan offered him - according to Heikal's narration - a device that records all conversations for 50 telephone lines within a 5-kilometer radius, and Heikal refused Marawan's gift.

“All Egyptians' calls are on the air,” said my colleague in charge more than 15 years ago, so it is not surprising that we hear from time to time leaks about phone calls taking place in closed rooms between officials or non-officials. Perhaps the pressing question: Why is it not in video and audio? Are there no audio and video recordings, for example?

In 2017, Egyptian cinema produced a film entitled (The Originals), a story, screenplay, and dialogue by Ahmed Murad, directed by Marwan Hamed, and starring Khaled El-Sawy and Maged El-Kedwany. So that we can control according to the plans of the security services). And in the evening of the same night, a mobile phone reaches him, with details of his life in audio and video everywhere: inside his house, his previous work, his childhood, his youth, his entire life recorded in audio and video.

The events of the film develop to find that there is a device that monitors it, represented by one of its members (Khaled Al-Sawy), who presents himself as one of the guards of the homeland, as he monitors all people so that no tremors and crises occur in the homeland. When the citizen asks him about the number of people being monitored, he answers that they are the active percentage in society (about 60% of the people), and they use part of the people in monitoring in addition to the devices. And what is required of the dismissed citizen from his job is to work somewhere in a city that seemed to be very luxurious as an observer for those who are dangerous to the homeland (from the point of view of security), and they are frustrated who do not achieve their goals.

Samir (the hero of the film) begins his work to discover that everyone is being watched and under control. Through the telephone, everything is on the screens in front of him, because the point of view of the man of the device is that everyone must be put under control (everyone is inside the poultry farm.. domestic) until The events do not surprise us.

Samir discovers, through the target to be monitored, that there is a purchase of something from inside a pharaonic tomb (he initially thinks that they are antiquities, then discovers later that they are lotus flower seeds). When he submits his report, he is surprised that the smuggling of antiquities is not important in itself, but more important Something for the devices is to thwart attempts to change the reality, and return things to their normal state, as for the antiquities abroad, they are preserved more than the Egyptians! (So ​​says the security recruiter).

The man of the apparatus maintains everything in the homeland, and accompanies Samir in every meeting to a different place. They meet in mosques and singers know him well, in an important reference to the Sufis who, from his point of view, are “original” in the homeland. On another night, he accompanies him to a celebration. On the occasion of the birth of the Virgin Mary, it seems clear that they are treated with intimacy, as there are beggars and shoe shiners, and everyone is watching everyone. They are also the (original) protectors of the homeland (Bahia eyes), of whom (Samir) became one.

Samir approaches the heroine (Mena Shalaby) and expresses his admiration for her, and at that point the device man shocks him and asks him to know the truth about the people closest to him, his wife and children, because “Cain did not know Abel even though he was his brother and killed him, and also Pharaoh did not know Moses despite He raised him in his house.” The hero is surprised, to discover that he does not know his children, and his life seems new to him, so he watches them all on monitor screens, and his life, which he thought was stable, is destroyed.

He receives a call from another phone, so that we discover through the film that there is another security apparatus that watches the first apparatus and knows how well it works. In the end, it serves to keep the situation as it is, and if the opposite happens, then their mission is to return things to their normal course.

The film presents - through the heroine researcher in Pharaonic history - the story of the Egyptian civilization, the conscience and the law that made the Egyptians lead science and the world in the past, the secret of the law of justice (Maat Law) and its thirty articles, and the search for ways to return to justice, freedom and dignity, and what civilization was exposed to Egyptian, which was demolished by the Roman army when it occupied Egypt, and this is the secret of the surveillance it is subjected to.

The hero tries to rebel against what he has become, and leaves everything, and goes to the oases in order to start a new life that depends on nature, and to get rid of the modern devices that monitor everyone, and the moment he grabs a device after years, the man of the device is with him, so no one can Exiting the farm (the poultry farm... everything that is controlled!).

The film, which was produced five years ago, tells us: We are all being watched, and this presents two paths, either salvation or submission, as the choice is always for man. It is not required of a movie, writer, or director to lead a movement of change, but rather the task of creativity is enlightenment, and we must determine our destiny.

Finally, after what was raised recently following the leaks that were published of officials who were said to be from within the Egyptian presidential institution, and what the movie (The Originals) refers to, can we soon see video leaks (audio and image)? I believe that there are already such leaks, And it may be used one day, because the recordings are made from a long time ago in all the places and countries of control, and a large part of the control of superpowers over our countries, their capabilities, and their orientations is the result of recordings that were made, and they are always made on the command centers in the countries afflicted by their dictatorships, so there are no surprises in audio leaks, sooner or later. Sooner.