ANHRI condemns the censorship authority rejection to permit shooting a movie called “Second year- Preparatory School” after amending the scenario for the second time and despite it has received a grant from the ministry of culture which the authority is affiliated to.

“Amr Salama”, the director, has submitted the movie for the first time on 2012. It was named “la-Mo’khza” which means “No culpability” in English. The movie narrates a story of a Christian child whose family life deteriorate so he had to go to a public school. As a result of his fear of mistreatment because of his religion, he hide his reality from his colleagues. Then everyone knows about it and he found that his colleagues accept him naturally. The censorship authority refused the scenario due to allegations of inciting sedition.

The director amended the scenario and the name changed to “Second year – Preparatory”. Then he submitted it for the second time to the censorship authority, on 2011, but he was surprised of being rejected again. While he was amending the movie, he win a grant of 2 million EGP to produce the movie from the ministry of culture. The amendments were conducted to the movie to abandon the religion of the child and just addressed the challenges that he faces due to the deterioration of his family financially and the discrimination he faces in the public schools due to his poverty. On last May, he submitted the scenario to the censorship authority, but he was surprised that the officials declared the rejection of the scenario through newspapers and before officially notifying him. The rejection this time came due to the scenario implies defamation to the ministry of Education!

ANHRI said that “the intransigence of the censorship authority for more than two years and rejecting to permit shooting of the movie because of flimsy reasons and implies unwelcome in the details of the vision of the director. It represents a blatant intervention to harass the governmental bureaucracy in Egypt in the freedom of expression and creativity. That assures the continuity of censoring the creative actions representing a restriction to the progress of the cinema in Egypt. It is unimaginable can’t develop its creative tools as long as it is subject to the narrow mind of the Flabby and stagnant bureaucratic officials”.

ANHRI added “the receiving of the said scenario to a grant from the ministry of culture in the same time that the censorship authority, which is affiliated to the ministry of culture, reject it for the third time, is an evidence for confusion and the contradiction of the governmental bureaucracy in Egypt. It assures that the time has come to end such censorship. We call the ministry of culture to intervene to end such farce privately. We reassure on the need to revoke any bureaucratic restriction related to creativity work as it is a serious assault to the freedom of expression. The receiver must be the only one to judge the art work itself and its coordination with the reality or not”.

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