In reply to a bad plot
Boy oh boy! Does this story need fact-checking.
One cannot deny censorship in Egypt is a problem even when they show some tolerance with a few select movies. But I find it extremely hard to believe this story above. I am an Egyptian and a movie fan as well and this plot has lots of holes before we can even think it's entertaining, let alone true.
First, as some twitter comments clarified, censors have nothing to do with subtitle editing. This is done by the distributors with a private agency. So this whole story loses its base. But let's move on to other goofs:
There is no reason anyone would choose to put the subtitles in the middle of the frame, censors or not. Egyptians have been doing subtitles for decades and we never heard of such unprofessional, unjustified work. Even if that was the case the movie distributors would reject the copies.
Egyptian audience do not storm out of a theater and “throw” the glasses at the screen for misaligned subtitles or even a censored sex scene. All nudity is censored in all movies and we never heard of audience objecting.
Censorship office is a normal government office that wouldn't have such weird 3 a.m. shifts
It is unlikely that a government-clerk class guy would use the term "sushi eating" to attack an upper class person. This is so uncommon. But let's give Mr. Wael this one.
Security would not rough up Mr. Khairy and his friends and just leave them sitting out there for hours. He would end up in some police station almost immediately.
Who is Mr. Khairy's grandfather? The family name does not resemble anyone important who would allow them in. And who did he call to let them in this late?
I wish Mr. Khairy could elaborate on how exactly a copy of the movie was ready for editing once they walked in? What kind of editing exactly? And what tool did they use to “relocate” the subtitles? Did they edit the reel itself or a digitized copy? How would they get a digitized copy back on film reel? Who paid for that? And how many copies did they need to replace all the ones in theaters? Three copies at least since foreign movies are allowed three copies only to enter the country. This again requires ignoring the fact that subtitles are not done at the censors office. This story reminds me of how the little girl from Jurassic Park walked into the control room and said “That's UNIX. I know how to use it” and took control over the whole park.
How did they get back the censored scene?
The censor had a hard disk with all the censored scenes of other movies? Do movie distributors download their movies off the internet and send it to that office? Don't movies come on reels? Unless that guy shelled out a handsome amount of money to transfer those butchered celluloid frames into digital video there is no way he could end up with that valuable hard disk. And if he had that kind of money, wouldn't that make him a sushi eating testicle himself?
A panel of censors makes decisions about movies, not a single Mr. Mostafa. If the decision is appealed it goes to a higher panel, until it's the decision of the chief censor himself, who is NOT Mr. Mostaf. In fact if a Mr. Mostafa made that decision he probably lost his job by now.
So Mr. Khairy, I will have to agree with your imaginary censor friend, you are probably a testicle with a bad story. But I'm not sure about your sushi eating habits.
