Ten years ago in January, the people of Egypt took to the streets to demand the fall of President Hosni Mubarak and his regime.
It was the most spectacular of the revolutions during the so-called Arab Spring both in numbers and media coverage, as well as for the abject failure of its goals.
Manal Khaled’s long-gestating, aptly-named “Trapped” is composed of three stories set in those early days, when people from all walks of life were thrown together during the struggle for freedom, sharing their fears and hopes with strangers.
That it struggles to do so is more a reflection of the prosaic nature of the filmmaking rather than the spirit of those involved.The subject alone is a dangerous one to address in the current Egyptian political climate given the heightened state of repression under the military dictatorship, and Khaled struggled to find backers, ultimately crowdsourcing funding via
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