I think as much as the city is changing us, our experience inside the city also changes. I think, a city like Cairo - and it's interesting because yesterday, a friend of mine told me the same this thing about New York - is a city that you can't control. It's very bold and very aggressive, and it will constantly resist any attempt at control. But even though you can't control it, you can find your path within the city. You can come to a better understanding of your relationship with it.

I think that to me, films are personal affairs. It doesn't mean that I am against other people doing things differently, but I'm talking about what I can do. So I don't feel comfortable going to a new city or a certain class of which I don't have sufficient knowledge, doing research on that, and then writing a story about it I don't think I have the ability of presenting other people on screen in that way. It makes me uncomfortable. This doesn't mean that I only want to talk about myself. I want to talk about what I know.

Downtown Cairo is at the center of the city, it is a place that has to be shared between different classes. It's a place where you see the bigger picture of the city's social fabric. It's also a place where you see all the contradictions of having all these layers, classes, and differences at the same time. And this is also where they clash, and where they negotiate. They negotiate their demands, their tastes, the lifestyles they want to have. So it's a very interesting space. I think that Downtown has maintained that identity before, during, and after the revolution.

I think as much as the city is changing us, our experience inside the city also changes. I think, a city like Cairo - and it's interesting because yesterday, a friend of mine told me the same this thing about New York - is a city that you can't control. It's very bold and very aggressive, and it will constantly resist any attempt at control. But even though you can't control it, you can find your path within the city. You can come to a better understanding of your relationship with it.

I hate political films that have one particular message that they're trying to convey. I think propaganda is very dangerous, and it's very easy for anything to slip into it. I also think that propaganda is something that defies the identity of cinema. I hate propaganda in cinema, even if it was promoting the political stance that I myself am allied with. I always say that the responsibility of a film is first and foremost: To be a film. It's not a manifesto, it's not an op-ed.

Every film has a political side. It's something that you cannot ignore. Politics is a part of everything, it's how we speak, how we perceive one another, how we hold this interview: Everything is politics. But it's a very different thing to just stuff your film with political messages.

For me, filmmaking is an ongoing self-reflection process. I kind of push everything to the edge. I feel very exposed and fragile when I make a film. It's a process of dealing with loneliness. And it's also very dramatic - because while you are working on a film, you just realize how incapable you are of dealing with all these things. And you open yourself up, and it's like your heart is utterly exposed. And it's very tiring on a daily basis.