An American in Egypt

A Brief Commentary / Review, and Explantion of this month’s film selection, “Free Trip to Egypt”
by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Director

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are.” --Carl Jung

A Canadian-born Muslim, who is now a software entrepreneur living in Switzerland, randomly reaches out to some Americans he’s never met, but who fear this stranger. He invites them on an all-expense-paid 10-day trip to Egypt in July, 2017.

As a non-judgmental, hopeful idealist, he makes a documentary that ends up being the most extraordinary travelogue you’ll ever see. Once the film is done, he sets up his own film distribution (called Kindness Films), and launches a world-wide social petition movement called “Pledge to Listen” (just Google it, if interested).

The cast of characters in this film is a diverse lot who accept the offer of this free trip for a variety of reasons. There’s a school teacher, an African-American cop, a Marine Corps veteran, a single mom, a fundamentalist Christian, beauty pageant queen, and a retired couple who were self-professed liberals in their younger days, but have grown more suspicious in their later years.

As the viewer might suspect, the result is a docu-drama, where former mindsets are converted and lives transformed as a result of direct human interaction. As the film’s creator puts it, “The stories that emerge from these improbable connections are provocative, surprising, funny, magical, emotional, revealing, enlightening, and ultimately life-changing.”

The viewer will have the opportunity to both identify with, and react to, the variety of real lives that are laid bare; through the willingness of these travelers to honestly express both who they are, and seek to become. There are moments in this film that are both timely, in terms of what we are all experiencing together in what is indisputably our global village; as well as personal touching moments where the human capacity for simple empathy can transcend a language barrier.

Non-spoiler alert: Don’t miss the “epilogue” with the special return to Egypt for the camel ride ...

Why this film now for our Mountain Shadow audiences?

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a challenging time for everyone. While our film selection for this month arose out of the creator’s desire two years ago to address some American’s fear of one group of humankind, the underlying question (and film’s suggested message) could not be more timely. While we bring our Mountain Shadow audiences the best in foreign and independent filmmaking, we’ve focused on U.S. selections the last few months. This month we’ll go abroad the only way we’re allowed at this time!

In addition, our membership’s mid-year survey results clearly expressed a preference and need to see great films that were not only substantive and thought-provoking; but hope-giving, as well. I hope you find “Free Trip to Egypt” to be the case.

A Personal Note -- A Small World:

This film has not yet received wide distribution, and I only became aware of it as a result of a Mountain Shadow member passing it along. As it turns out -- and, in a serendipitous moment -- I met the film director (Ingrid Serban) and film producer – who also composed the original score for the film, Forest Sun) in the lobby of the Walnut Creek library in 2017, during one of our screenings! At that time, Ingrid had completed a short film, “Anuta,” which we subsequently shared with our audiences preceding a feature film that year.

We are indeed a global village! jb