''Bashtery Ragel'' ( ar, بشتري راجل; "Buying a Man") is a 2017 Egyptian
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film, starring
Nelly Karim
Nelly Karim ( ar, نيللي كريم; born 18 December 1974) is an Egyptians, Egyptian actress, model, and ballerina.
Life and career
Nelly is the daughter of a Russian mother and an Egyptian father from Zagazig. Karim said in an interview wi ...
.
Karim's character tries to conceive of a child through asking a man to do so via
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
. Inas Lofty was the screenwriter.
Plot
The main character, Shams, runs a business. She decides to ask a man to give her a sperm donation, and to make it
halal
''Halal'' (; ar, حلال, ) is an Arabic word that translates to "permissible" in English. In the Quran, the word ''halal'' is contrasted with ''haram'' (forbidden). This binary opposition was elaborated into a more complex classification kno ...
she proposes a marriage, though it is only done for the purpose of the sperm donation. Her mother is concerned about the marriage's motive being only for a business reason, but Shams becomes genuinely attracted to him, and he does with his wife. Ultimately they instead have a traditionally conceived child.
France 24
France 24 ( in French) is a French state-owned international news television network based in Paris. Its channels broadcast in French, English, Arabic, and Spanish and are aimed at the overseas market.
Based in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-M ...
stated that this is "perhaps the only ending that could make the film a success with Egyptian audiences".
[
]
Cast
* Nelly Karim
Nelly Karim ( ar, نيللي كريم; born 18 December 1974) is an Egyptians, Egyptian actress, model, and ballerina.
Life and career
Nelly is the daughter of a Russian mother and an Egyptian father from Zagazig. Karim said in an interview wi ...
: Shams Noureddine (شمس نور الدين)
* - Baghat Abu Al-Saad (بهجت أبو السعد)
* : Nagwa Youssef (نجوى يوسف)
Development
According to the screenwriter, the film was modeled after a friend who wanted to be a single mother as she wanted companionship but was uninterested in being married to a man, as she had not found good romantic relationships.[
The film development team used a ]Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
page purportedly of a woman asking for a sperm donation as a marketing ploy.[ - This is a translation of an article in Arabic published in ''Al-Masry Al-Youm'', with some editing done to it.]
Lofty decided to use the romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
genre to make the Egyptian public more amenable to the film's subject matter.[
]
See also
* List of Egyptian films of 2017
References
External links
*
* {{IMDb title, 6539420
Index of articles from
''Egypt Independent
''Egypt Independent'' is an online newspaper that formerly published a weekly 24-page English-language edition of the Egyptian newspaper, ''Al-Masry Al-Youm''.
History
On 24 November 2011, the first print edition of ''Egypt Independent'' was pu ...
''
2017 films
2017 romantic comedy films
Egyptian romantic comedy films
2010s Egyptian films