Tickling Giants

Tickling Giant is a captivating, intense and authentic experience of what it means to rebel, about the consequences, what the stakes really are, and how the fresh wind of change is received by both the crooks and the oppressed. It is not the story of Bassem Youssef, for Bassem is only a satirist not a leader; it is a story of a voice retrieved, fought for with blood, clenched onto, and then ultimately lost. It shows, with vividness and authenticity, both the promise of the Arab spring and its eventual failure, touching on the reasons for that and showing the timeline of all of it happening in slow and inexorable progression.

It is a must-see for those who are interested in the story of the Arab Spring , for those who want to understand what it means to live in a third-world country where authoritarianism and ignorance prevail, and even for those who just want to know how fascism works and how to spot its warning signs. It's all of this and more, told in the context of Bassem Youssef's world.

As an Egyptian, I watched myself laugh, smile and cry throughout the film as I lived all of it again.

Saw this at the Leiden International Film Festival 2016 (LIFF, website: leidenfilmfestival.nl/en), where it was part of a program Humor in Islamic Countries, in addition to The Lizard (Kamal Tabrizi, 2004) shown earlier that day. Luckily, there was an introductory speech that explained some aspects we would easily have overlooked otherwise, some of the advantages of a festival above a "normal" screening in a cinema around the corner.

A few weeks earlier, before and after the screening of Clash (original title: Eshtebak) at the Film Fest Ghent 2016, we learned from director Mohamed Diab that humor is a normal vehicle for Egyptians to escape from bitter circumstances, even at funerals or other sad moments. Knowing that, both Clash and Tickling Giants leave us with the impression that satire is Egyptian history for now. Humor may still serve its purpose in-house, but it cannot be used anymore against authorities or governmental institutions.

Back to Tickling Giants: Spanning several years, it gave a good impression how the political climate in Egypt changed, and how little elbowing room there was eventually left for satire or critical remarks against authority. Opponents of Youssef's talk show argued that it was a feeble time for upcoming democracy in Egypt, that trust in authority was better not disturbed. In other words, later there will come more room for free speech. We cannot have it now, certainly not at this very moment with a fresh democracy under construction.

The TV network broke under the pressure and even sued the presenter (cannot imagine why, but they said he broke his contract), though the president stated on TV that this premature ending was not his doing. Who are we to believe?? This is certainly the morale of this movie, even if we refuse to see conspiracies all around. We know of countries where you can be locked away nowadays as a journalist because of doing what you are paid to do. It is something we previously thought was typical for underdeveloped third-world countries. That is not true anymore.

I liked That Movie , It Make Me remember That Beautiful Days Watching You , You Make Me Hope To Be As You ! Bassem You Are The Best If You Can Return Return Man All Of Us Recognized That We Was Wrong We wasn't Rolled By A President We Were Roling By Bala7a ! Bassem I Say It Again Man , Reeeeturn <<<<3333

If you were like me, you were enthralled by the kids who help topple Egypt's Mubarak regime what seems like ages ago. Dr. Bassem Youssef emerged out of that chaos, and played the role of gadfly to the next regime, all-the-while following a script that folks like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert had made famous in the United States.

Tickling Giants deconstructs Bassem Youssef's story following a combination of interviews, on-air broadcasts and contributions from Stewart, various political pundits and even Youssef's family. It would be a beautiful, poignant take on the life of a comedian, but...of course, the crash of Egypt's brief democratic experiment is reeling in the background.

Sara Taksler--Producer for the The Daily Show--ventures into documentary film remarkably, with a story that does not allow itself to be choked with data nor overwhelmed by the giant personality that is Bassem Youssef. What emerges instead is Youssef's amazing mixture of idiocy and courage, with those who took him to the Ball now begging to be the first to hang him from the rafters. It is a peculiarly effective documentary--moving forward in time but backwards progressively as Egypt descends, and as the threats, charges and actions against Youseff begin to pile up.

Perhaps the most telling part of the film is the courage of Youssef's staff--compiled of an amazing group of talented young writers, it is easy to see why Youseff is so sad. It is not his own but their future that he is risking his jokes to defend. For those who do not have friends from the Arab world, a couple of minutes with his crew tosses aside any preconceptions of what it means to be from the Middle East, and I was left saddened to think that the ones likely to be trampled first when the giants are tickled are these funny, courageous women and men.

On every level, Taksler's years of working with satire and shorts for the Daily show has allowed her to create this documentary like a series of haiku, and the beautiful sadness that is Tickling Giants serves well either as art or education, though it remains a documentary pleading for a better ending than the one Egypt's dictators seem to be planning.

What hurts the most is that I personally lived every moment of this documentary. It was nothing less than a revolution regardless of what school books will share now. The people have awoken and next time around it will not be so easy to keep them quiet.