Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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Video: Egyptian Film Al Haram El Rabe3 Rips Off Mr Robot

From dialogue to mise en scene, social media is exploding with how Al Haram El Rabe3 apparently plagiarised an entire scene from American drama-thriller TV series Mr. Robot.

Staff Writer

Egypt was once dubbed the Hollywood of the Middle East for its thriving movie industry which peaked in the period between the 1940s and the 1960s, which later came to be known as Egyptian cinema’s golden age. Now, it seems the nickname has taken on a whole new meaning as Egyptian filmmakers seem to be getting grabbier with the inspiration and we are not talking about borrowings here.  

You don’t have to take our word for it; one Facebook user aptly captured just one of many incidents of intellectual property theft by Egyptian filmmakers. One such instance is the Peter Mimi-directed thriller Al Haram El Rabe3 (The Fourth Pyramid) – never mind the plot’s stark similarity to Mr. Robot, the director has been accused of plagiarising an entire scene from the American drama-thriller TV series. Said Facebook user makes the case for his claim by showing the scene in question from both Mr. Robot and Al Haram El Rabe3 and it is very hard to argue the opposite when the dialogue from the first scene of the first episode of Mr. Robot which premiered in June of 2015, is taken almost word for word and translated into Arabic in Al Haram El Rabe3 which came out in 2016. And no, the fact that Mr. Robot was created by Egyptian-American Sam Esmail and stars Rami Malek doesn’t make it okay to rip them off because we are practically family.