Terror und Kebab

Sherif Arafa
Egypt 1993 | 105 Min. | DVD, OmU

Ter­ror­ism and the Kebab is a farce denounc­ing the absur­di­ty of bureau­cra­cy in modern Egypt. Adel Imam, Egypt‘s lead­ing comic actor, is a father who wants to move his son to a school closer to home. He goes to El Muga­maa, the centre of Cairo‘s mono­lith­ic bureau­cra­cy, to pick up the required doc­u­ments. Frus­trat­ed by the lack of response, he ends up attack­ing a fun­da­men­tal­ist offi­cial and, when armed police respond to the sit­u­a­tion, a machine gun acci­den­tal­ly finds its way into Imam‘s hands. As a ter­ror­ist, his demands to the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs are simple: Shish Kebab made of high­class lamb. After having a hearty meal with his hostages, how­ev­er, his demands become more polit­i­cal. The film was shot at “Mugam­maa“, the biggest admin­is­tra­tion build­ing of the African con­ti­nent, just at the edge of the leg­endary Tahrir, the place of the recent protests in Cairo.