The films the Arab world doesn’t want you to see

‘I want a woman to be President,’ declared one of the ambulance drivers interviewed by Sherief Elkatsha for his film Cairo Drive. I don’t think he was joking. He was fed up with the struggle to do his job in the chaos of the Egyptian capital’s streets clogged by 14 million vehicles. Elkatsha’s feature documentary took five years to make and takes us from 2009 through the Tahrir Square uprising up to the most recent elections purely through looking at the traffic, the lifeblood of the city. He set out to give us voices, not tell a political story, and this lies behind many of the films shown in last weekend’s BBC Arabic Film Festival, held in the radio theatre at Broadcasting House.

The festival, now in its second year, is fast becoming a forum in which issues that are not openly discussed (usually because it is forbidden, sometimes under pain of death) can be addressed.