You can spread a lie in a day and after years it becomes the truth,” says prominent director Amr Salama. And when controversial issues fail to be portrayed in an informative and prejudice-free context, it takes nothing short of a monumental effort to break ingrained stereotypes in the eyes of an otherwise unwitting public.

HIV/AIDS is one of the many issues that, to date, has been deliberately misrepresented (not to mention underrepresented, with only a handful of movies broaching the subject over the past thirty years) by the Egyptian cinema industry.

In 2005, Salama mulled tackling HIV in Egypt through a documentary feature, but with his biggest challenge being objectively portraying the issue, the project progressively turned into a movie that has been four years in the making.

“The problem is that the actual story was very hard to believe,” explains Salama whose film is inspired by the real-life story of Asmaa, an HIV-positive woman in her 40s who, after the death of her husband, moves out of her native village with her father and teenage daughter.

Struggling against prejudice and injustice, Asmaa, who has a life-threatening gallbladder infection and needs urgent treatment, is forced to choose between appearing on TV to appeal for help in curing her infection — thereby revealing her HIV-positive status — or suffer in silence.

“The challenge was to make this story believable, to make the truth believable.” At press time Salama had won the Best Director from the Arab World Award at the 2011 Abu Dhabi Film Festival for his work on this movie.

Tunisian actress Hend Sabry masterfully plays the lead role in an attempt to shed light on a minority living in the shadows. “It took us a long way to get there, it was a very painful and delicate process. You can’t talk about such an issue and not do it right, because after all, it is a social responsibility. You are talking about a social taboo that is present in society but it is either you talk about it in the right context, or you don’t [talk about it at all],” says Sabry.

She adds how important it was not to be judgmental in explaining how some of the characters of the movie contracted the disease, since most of the time this is when people do become judgmental.

“It was very hard for us, but we managed to do it in a very professional way. Our message is that nobody has the right to judge me [as Asmaa] and how I got the disease, and it is my right to be treated like everyone else,” Sabry explains.

“[The public] has misconceptions about the disease and people scare them and tell them that it all has to do with illicit or ‘haram’ things,” says Salama, adding that ignorance certainly is a problem.

Sabry maintains that the stigma surrounding the issue of HIV is created and perpetuated through the media. Both she and Salama recall how the handful of movies of the 1980s dealt with AIDS and conveyed a very stigmatized image of the disease and how it is contracted. Among these was the early 1990s Love in Taba starring Mamdouh Abdel Alim, which depicted a group of young men who travel to the Sinai city of Taba. There they meet foreign women who pass on the disease through sexual intercourse.

Starring alongside Maged El Kedwani, who won Best Actor Award at the 2011 Abu Dhabi Film Festival for his role in Asmaa, Hany Adel and Ahmed Kamal, Sabry tries to bring to life a character who carries the virus but who also faces issues and problems that audiences can relate to.

 “I didn’t want to make a movie just about AIDS. I wanted to make a movie about a woman who happens to have AIDS,” she says, adding that it is unfair to package the character of Asmaa as just a woman who is HIV positive.

“She is a woman and she has her issues, and she lived her love story, and she has a child, but she happens to have a very big problem in life like all of us,” Sabry continues. “Everyone has a burden in their life, and for HIV-positive people it is HIV.”

Salama agrees. “The importance of this movie is that it is showing a reality and makes important discoveries; it talks about a very precise minority but all their problems are present in our society,” he says, adding that the film was a very challenging experience for the team working on creating it and perhaps the hardest he himself has worked on.

For the much-loved actress of Ana Ayza Atgawez fame, the movie has given Sabry the space to express herself as an actress. “In Egyptian cinema there are so few characters written for the Egyptian woman, the lead role is always written for male actors, so it is really rare to find a role like this. I [am attracted to] social issues that are taboo and this is what I tried to do in my past. I like to go where nobody has been before or where people are embarrassed to go,” says Sabry.

Sabry is very aware that with Asmaa she has a lot to win, but also a lot to lose. “I think the movie will make a difference [to those whose lives are affected by HIV, but I don’t know if it will make a difference to many people, especially [judgmental] people who have [preconceived notions and who] might not want to see it. But it’s a step,” says Sabry, who does fear she “will most likely be attacked for talking about people who are a minority and attacked by ignorant people who still believe that AIDS is only contracted by homosexuals and prostitutes.”

The actress does, however, have hope that the film will raise awareness and reach more people. She also hopes the issue itself will be tackled more in the media after the release of the movie. “I just want to ask people to go give a chance to this movie, because it is worth it. I hope it will stay with them.”

Asmaa’s story is eye-opening and inspirational, and through the movie the characters learn to break the walls of silence and taboo while shedding light on the suffering minority of HIV positive patients hidden within Egyptian society, facing an unjust system

 
Facts of Life
According to UNAIDS agency 2009 estimates, 11,000 people are currently living with HIV in Egypt. Though Egypt is considered a low-prevalence country (below 0.1% in 2009), 3,919 cases of HIV were detected in 2010, among which 1,078 (27.5 percent) developed AIDS.

A report released in 2011 by the Egypt Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) entitled “Combating HIV/AIDS Related Stigma in Egypt,” explains how stigma and discrimination are serious obstacles standing in the way of effective HIV/AIDS prevention and care. “Fear of discrimination often keeps people from seeking treatment and care for AIDS, or from openly disclosing their HIV status. Those infected with HIV, or suspected of being infected, can be refused medical care, housing and employment, insurance, or entry into a foreign country,” the report reveals.

 Sabry, who has been a regional ambassador for WFP (World Food Program) since 2010 and who has also worked on many campaigns, including with UNAIDS, cannot stress enough how the lack of knowledge affects the issue. “There is a problem with ignorance, people do not know how you can contract the disease and that you can live with it for a long time. There are even a lot of people living with the disease without knowing it — I would multiply the [official] numbers by two or even four,” she says, adding that this ignorance doesn’t only come from uneducated people but from doctors as well. “It’s a shame that doctors who have studied medicine for seven years treat HIV-positive people as if they are animals,” she says.

A Time for Change
Asmaa is the latest in a line of social taboo-breaking offerings from New Century Production, a company owned by actress, singer and producer Bushra who is known for her outspoken stances on feminism and discrimination. And although Asmaa —which debuted at the Abu Dhabi film festival in October and is expected to be released in Egypt at the end of the year or in early 2012 — was made some time before the January 25 Revolution, it shows how far the country still has to go in addressing social problems.

“This is not a movie about the revolution, but it has a revolutionary side, it goes against all the things that we hate and want to change which are ignorance, lack of education, class system and healthcare,” says Sabry, adding that all these elements that lead to wanting to change the system that we are living in are part of the movie but in a subtle way. “Every movie that will deal with social subjects will come in the context of the revolution.” et