Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story. Original title: Ehky Ya Schahrazad (review)

Hebba (Mona Zakki), is a popular, beautiful, and seductive female television host for Egypt’s Sun TV. She is married to Karim (Hassan El Raddad), a successful journalist, who is vying for the editor-in-chief position at a leading government-run newspaper. Living in the lap of luxury, the couple enjoys the world of the quintessential yuppy, no-children, double-income, Westernized, top wage-earning, young go-getters of Egypt’s 1 percent—global capitalists living in the fast-paced Cairo of the new millennium. Hebba, sporting short skirts, lots of make-up, Gucci bags, and Chanel perfume, is a modern-day Scheherazade. Hosting her tell-all talk show, she makes it her business to dig into the stories of corruption and skewed politics of Mubarak’s crooked regime. Her cutting-edge, hard-hitting narratives coaxed out of the mouths of the downtrodden cause much chagrin for her husband, who covets the top job at his newspaper, even if it means being in the back pocket of the political elite. Karim tells Hebba that she had better back off from exposing the underbelly of Egyptian politics. To comply with her husband’s ambition, she turns to telling the stories of women and romance, foraging into places she has never been before.

Her guests are veiled and unveiled women who have been wronged by abusive husbands, boyfriends, and the general patriarchal system in which they are trapped. Their stories prove to be more explosive than politics as Hebba encourages their testimonies. In the first story, a woman tells the audience how she refused to marry a well-placed minister because he wanted to force her to wear the hijab, give up her job, and hand over her car keys and her money as prescribed by Shari’a law. The second story involves three unmarried sisters who inherit their father’s small hardware store but realize they need a man to run it. Said, the young, handsome employee who for years was trusted by their father as his right-hand man, is given carte blanche to run things, but he also must choose one of the sisters to marry so that things can “stay in the family.” Said says he is happy to comply, but ends up seducing each sister and then is murdered by the most jealous of the three. Upon her release from prison, she reveals her story in all its gruesome details to Hebba’s TV audiences, who are riveted to their screens.

The third story involves a young successful female dentist, seduced by an economist who becomes a well-placed minister in the upper echelons of the political elite. She eventually finds out that he is in the business of preying on women from good families. With promises of marriage, he convinces them to have premarital sex, impregnates them, and then blackmails their families, protesting that he “is sterile” and therefore couldn’t be the father of their children. Facing ruined reputations, the women usually pay up. Except Nahed, who tells Hebba that once wronged she protested in the streets and stood outside parliament with a sign denouncing the minister’s actions. Illicit stories of sex morph into tales of corrupt politics, and Hebba’s husband accuses her of “getting them both in trouble” with authorities.

The last story is the last straw for Karim, who sees his future as editor-in-chief go down the drain along with his manhood, since he is viewed by his peers as unable to rein in his wife. He comes home and savagely beats Hebba. Her last story is the story of herself, on camera, black-eyed and beaten, but defiant: “Never did I think I would become the story. . ., an oppressed woman.” Scheherazade at last tells her own story of romantic woe, damaged reputation, and financial ruin.

Like many directors across the Arab world, Yousry Nasrallah’s feminist critique of modern Egypt reveals women as...