DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
On May 2, 2020, at the height of the first lockdown, two news stories grabbed my attention. First, that a filmmaker named Shady Habash had died in suspicious circumstances in Egypt's notorious Tora prison. Second, that the next day would celebrate the 36th annual International Dawn Chorus Day.

For me, these two stories combined to deliver a peculiar gut punch. Seven years earlier, I'd been locked up in that same prison, jailed in a roundup with hundreds of others in the aftermath of the Rabaa Square Massacre. As I learned more about Shady's life and work and death, and watched his videos, and read his final despairing letters that friends had smuggled out of prison, his words viscerally brought back memories of Tora. Staring at the dawn ceiling, watching the night shadows recede into the cool grey of morning. Straining to hear the faint call of the dawn chorus. “Prison doesn’t kill, loneliness does.”

I emailed friends and family on six continents, asking them to record their dawn choruses the next morning, shooting on their phones. 40 responded, bemused by the request, perhaps welcoming a change from the daily grind of their lockdown routines. Gathering the footage, my editor Kalil and I started to shape their clips into a whimsical zoom-grid, premised on the idea that birds from around the world had gathered to talk about Shady, trading theories, and questions about what might have happened.

And then, a month later, Sarah Hegazi took her life. I was part of an ad-hoc queer group in Toronto, providing support to the dozen LGBT refugees from Cairo who'd just arrived, fleeing Sisi's dictatorship. They'd been arrested the year before for flying a rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert. Sarah was one of them, and I'd met her a couple of times. She was unforgettable -- intense, passionate, deeply committed to radical change, tortured by nightmares of the three months she'd spent in prison, battling her demons the warmest of brave smiles.

Filming at her memorial, I was overwhelmed by the anecdotes and tears that poured forth from so many. She had touched many hearts and lives. Yet nothing could prepare any of us for the groundswell of tributes that followed, a wave across Europe and the Americas and the Arab world, in the months to come: vigils, concerts, songs, murals, poems. Bird songs.

For me, the stories of Shady and Sarah are bird songs, swooping and dipping like swallows at sunrise, joining the flock of so many Egyptian activists and artists, wrongfully incarcerated by the regime. In January this year, a Cairo chef was arrested for making cupcakes with penis decorations. In February, a film editor faced her eighth month behind bars, locked up for trying to deliver a letter to her brother, also imprisoned. Last week, the prisoners of Scorpion wing voted to continue their hunger strike, protesting the overcrowding.

International Dawn Chorus Day is dedicated to Shady and Sarah and to every Egyptian enduring the horrors of wrongful detention.

CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Dedicated to the memory of Shady Habash & Sarah Hegazi, and all of Egypt’s prisoners.

CONTACT

IMPACT PRODUCER:
Shant Joshi, Fae Pictures
shant@faepictures.com

PRESS:
Cynthia A. Amsden, Roundstone Communications
cynthia@roundstonepr.com

DISTRIBUTION:
Wanda Vanderstoop, Vtape Distribution
wandav@vtape.org

FILMMAKER:
John Greyson, Greyzone Ltd