CAIRO - Most schoolchildren in Egypt have experienced bullying as both victims and perpetrators, an eight-minute documentary film by promising director Tasneem Mohamed of the MSA University warned on Friday. Some Egyptian elementary school pupils told Miss Tasneem that they were bullied – including being shunned by friends, ignored or talked about behind their backs – at least once, the relatively well-edited film showed. In the meantime, Miss Tasneem's The Weight of Silence indicated that even junior high school students were picked on at least once in their school days. A good portion of elementary school pupils told Miss Tasneem, the film producer and director, that they had bullied their schoolmates at least once. "Anyone could be involved in bullying, which means bullying can occur no matter what the family backgrounds or individual characteristics are," The Weight of Silence warned. While no particular factors are proven to cause school bullying, stress may be behind the phenomenon, Tasneem's film shows. The film, covering some elementary and junior high school students aged between 10 and 15 in some Egyptian private schools, has one and only short message: "Bullying has long been a major educational issue in Egypt due to concerns over the high suicide rate among schoolchildren who are picked on." However, Miss Tasneem's film could have been more balanced if it covered violence in government-run schools, where bullying is a daily routine, to brush off the idea that the young director cares only about upper class schoolchildren and does not pay attention to the woes of ordinary Egyptian children. Overall, it is a good try by this young director, who should be given a bigger chance to produce another film about a similar social theme. It is highly recommended that Miss Tasneem's The Weight of Silence should be shown with English subtitles at any local documentary film festival to encourage the young director produce similar films about pressing social issues such as child labour, child abuse, domestic violence and espousal abuse, which are on the increase in a post-Revolution Egypt.
