His Cucumber Synopsis
An Egyptian woman shares her story about a man who sexually harasses her while at the market. Instead of ignoring him as most women would do, she confronts him with a shocking and unexpected tone.
About His Cucumber Filmmaker
An American Egyptian independent filmmaker, Sharine Atif graduated with an MFA in Film Directing at California Institute of the Arts in 2017. She experiments with different strategies to learn how best to create change through cinema, by using confrontation, humor, tenderness or aggression, highlighting empowered women in Egypt.
Her short film His Cucumber (2015) is a piercingly frank account of sexual harassment that went viral on social media on release, reaching half a million views in weeks. The film was screened at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2017. Her most recent work is her 15-minute short fiction thesis film Jebel Banat 2018; her retelling of a melancholic 19th century Egyptian legend about two Bedouin sisters escaping forced marriages. The film won the Student Visionary Award at Tribeca Film Festival 2019.
More from the Filmmaker
As a young woman growing up in Egypt, I would spend most of my time after school watching Disney cartoons. I especially related to Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Jasmine in Aladdin since we all shared something in common, over-protective fathers who forbid us from exploring the world outside the confines of where we were born. I believe it had a lot to do with why I was empowered to stand up against oppression, becoming the freer person I am today. Cinema has been my chosen tool to express my voice, to empower myself and highlight empowered women in hopes to empower others.
