The team behind a new Egyptian movie, Ashab Wala Business (Friends or Business), has decided to contribute a day’s box office revenues each week to the Palestinian cause.
The film, which involved on-location shooting in the Palestinian camps in South Lebanon, was written by Medhat Al Adl, directed by Ali Idris, and stars singer Mustafa Qamar, Hani Salama, Sami Al Adl, Nur, Tareq Abdel Aziz, Carol Al Haj and Aya Medhat Al Adl.
Producer Mohamed Al Adel told the daily Al Sharq Al Awsat that the planned donations were a simple contribution to the Intifada, made especially appropriate by the fact that the film depicts a TV presenter who travels to Palestine for special program about the uprising. The presenter strikes up a close friendship with a Palestinian.
The film’s plot involves the intense professional and personal rivalry between two presenters at a fictional satellite TV station called Network 2000, whose main selling point is entertainment, according to Cairolive.com.
Qamar and Salama, the main characters, are all about appearances, not substance. Their goal is to look as good as possible in front of the camera, and make viewers feel they can be stars too, whether via Salama's talent show, or Qamar's Dollars, Dollars competition.
Meanwhile, channel head Sami Al Adl is trying to choose one of them for a new ad campaign sponsored by a foreign company.
But then corporate politics rears its ugly head, as the channel head gets the idea that the channel should send someone out to cover the Intifada, even if only in the light-hearted way Network 2000 is famous for.
While one of the two rivals is chosen to go to Palestine, the other is handed the ad campaign, and the learning process begins. The guy who goes to cover the Intifada, of course, wakes up to the total and utter meaninglessness of what they've been doing back home, while their brothers and sisters in Palestine are suffering under the brutal Israeli occupation forces, says Cairoalive.com.
The movie's title becomes clear, as one member of the happy-go-lucky group gets serious only to discover that everyone else is just after the money.
Medhat Al Adl has provided the scripts for the commercially successful films Saidi Fil Gamaa Al Amrikiya (An Upper Egyptian at the American University), Hamam Fi Amsterdam (Hamam in Amsterdam) and Belia wa Demaghoh Al Alia (Belia's Big Head) and the Ahmed Al Saqa film Short Wa Fanilla Wa Cap (Shorts, T-Shirt and Cap), which all involved highly sensational political overtones – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
