Through clouds of smoke, two black-clad and face-masked central security troops advance steadily towards the camera, pausing every few seconds to fire shotgun rounds that whistle perilously close to the screen. On one side of the street is a column of armed riot police; on the other, hundreds of stone-throwing youths, their heads wrapped in scarves, bodies occasionally crumpling to the floor as another volley is fired. And in the middle of it all stands the cameraman, Mostafa Bahgat. "This stretch [of road], this little distance, is the most important 15 metres of urban space in our country right now," says the 31-year-old film-maker. "If I'm not there to record what is happening then the lies of the state will go unchallenged. If I wasn't in that place, at that time, I couldn't live with myself. It's what I have to do."
The film, which consists of a series of clips made over several days at the height of the unrest, directly contradicts many of the claims made by the ministry of interior regarding the type of weaponry deployed by its troops and its insistence that only "reasonable force" has been used to confront protesters.
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