Shifting narratives of the police in Egyptian cinema before and after the January 2011 revolution

This article discusses shifting narratives of the police in Egyptian cinema before and after the 2011 revolution. It contextualises cinematic representations in a broad socio-historical framework that underlines the significance of the police and their enormous presence in citizens’ everyday lives in Egypt’s political history of state building. In the early years of the independent nation after the 1952 Free Officers’ coup, when the police was considered a ‘patriotic institution’ (mu’assassah wataniyya), Egyptian films showed policemen as heroes, who worked day and night to keep public safety, prevent crime and maintain order on the streets. But later, particularly during the three decades preceding the 2011 revolution, films began to show police brutality, torture methods in jails and prisons, and the corruption permeating the police apparatus in more explicit ways. The article considers thematic and technical ruptures as well as continuities between pre- and post-2011 representations of the police.