Promotional poster for the series "Strawberry" (Al Jazeera)

Societies in crisis resort to searching for hope, even if it is false, and adventurers and fraudsters always succeed in selling the illusion to those in whose faces the doors of life have been closed. Perhaps the most present witness in social reality to this is the demand for magicians, charlatans, and charlatans at alarming rates. As for the series “Strawberry "Directed by Mohamed Ali and starring Nelly Karim, it is the huge queue that closed the entrance to a giant building in search of positive energy stones in the second episode of the work.

The series, which began airing in the second half of Ramadan, documents the state of despair among members of society. They are threatened with eviction from their home due to their inability to pay the monthly rent, a young man whose marriage plan ended before it began due to the cost he cannot meet, and an unemployed person who is tired of searching. About work.

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By the life of God, I felt that this series would do something wrong... from the first episode, I was unable to do so 🤣 #Strawberry #Nelly_Karim pic.twitter.com/KSEBhnCn9p

- Vrej Douzmanian (@vrejdouzmanian) March 27, 2024

The story of "Strawla" revolves around a light comedy about a girl who comes from the bottom of the social ladder, with a father who works as a real estate guard and a mother who works as a cup reader. The girl, "Strawla", dreams of rewriting a different family history and a dazzling future. She tries to work in real estate marketing, and despite her success, she is unable to... To get what you deserve, you are forced to market to an illusion that lives in stones and is called energy.

On the verge of homelessness and expulsion from home, “Strawberry” is forced to join a company that works through pyramid marketing to sell illusions to people in exchange for a large sum of money, but it works to involve them in the dream in exchange for financial compensation as marketers after they buy the product, and thus the “customer” sells the commodity to another customer, which soon turns into To a marketer.

Farawla succeeds in jumping from the bottom of the social ladder to the top, and turns into a businesswoman referred to as a businesswoman.

A special place

Nelly Karim occupies a special place among the actresses of her generation. She broke into the world of acting, coming from the world of ballet, to perform in cinematic roles, the most famous of which is her role in the movie “You Are My Life” with Menna Shalaby. In recent years, she has presented a vivid melodrama through a number of series, the most famous of which is “Women’s Prison” by the director. Kamla Abu Zekry, but the same director later presented her in a comedy series, “With 100 Wesh,” which proved her ability to perform comedy with the same efficiency with which she presented melodrama.

In "Strawberry", Nelly mixes her melodramatic and comedic performances, as the work expresses a state of intense drama and pure misery, which screenwriter Mohamed Suleiman Abdel Malek succeeded in covering with light comedy. Between the comedic situations and the light-hearted performance of Nelly, and those hidden tears in her sockets, a tragic story was presented of a girl who always wonders about the reason for her parents’ poverty in contrast to the wealth of the surroundings, as she lives in one of the most luxurious and wealthy neighborhoods in Egypt, “Zamalek,” but her father is a prison guard. later.

Director Mohamed Ali began his career with a successful film, “The Game of Love,” starring Khaled Abu Al-Naga in 2006, and his last work for cinema was the film “Mohamed Hussein” by actor Mohamed Saad in 2019, but he moved to television drama, and in recent years presented the “Al-Kadoud” series. And “When we were young” and “We have other sayings.”

Ali was able to control the rhythm of the work, and this was helped by the number of episodes of the series, which does not exceed 15 episodes, and thus he got rid of the boredom that is a prominent feature of the Ramadan 2024 series as a result of the expansion and lengthening.

Muhammad Ali also benefited from the technologies provided by the “Netflix” platform in his work, and this was clearly evident in the intro scene in each episode, and he often reviews the miserable memories and sorrows that Strawberry keeps in her memory related to her life as a poor child with a weak mother and an unjust, cruel, and selfish father.

The introduction to the episode presents a sad, miserable, and often humiliating scene for the child, “Strawberry,” and the episode mostly reviews the girl’s moments of success and excellence. This contradiction added a state of comfort to the viewer, who sees urgent justice being achieved in the episode itself. This is certainly a successful technique at the level of imagination, but it is deceptive. Very interesting if the viewer wants to find it in real life.

Actress Ola Rushdi appeared next to Nelly in the series, who plays the role of a wealthy girl who is helpless, but kind-hearted. She always stands by her friend. Rushdi played her role simply and without complexity, which helped her reach the heart easily.

As for the actor and musician Sedqi Sakhr, he proved through his performance that he is a great and promising actor’s project with his rich features of expression and spontaneity. Sakhr broke into the world of acting coming from the world of music, where he started on a radio program with actress and broadcaster Lubna Abdel Aziz when he was 15 years old. He was a member of the “Al-Tami” theatrical troupe, founded by Salam Yousry since 2003, and participated in acting in several short and long films by directors such as Kamla. Abu Zekry, Hala Al-Qusi, Iman Al-Najjar, and Sherif Al-Bendari.

Sakhr played several roles in drama series, including “Zay Al-Shams” and “Al-Gamaa Part Two.” He is one of the founders of the “Yousra Al-Hawari” music band in 2012, where he plays the harmonica.

Rare series

The topic of “Strawberry” intersects with a number of current phenomena that Egyptian society is experiencing, perhaps the most prominent of which is pyramid marketing, which has turned into an obsession in the past few years, but which ended with the arrival of a number of its practitioners to the courts. It is closer to a pyramid fraud project or an unstable business model whose goal Collecting money from the largest number of subscribers, while the biggest beneficiary is the one at the top of the pyramid.

The second phenomenon is energy therapy, which has sparked controversy on several levels, including religious and medical, and has appeared in action through two dimensions, one of which is financial blackmail of the poor and the rich alike, and the second is the claim that there is energy for happiness, hope and healing in some minerals or stones, which are not matters. Scientifically proven and closer to selling illusion to simple people.

As for the third phenomenon, which is the main dramatic line in the work, it is a poor girl’s attempt to escape from poverty and her ambition for a better life, and her exaggerated search for “revenge success” that goes beyond concealment to getting rid of memories of misery by creating new memories.

Source: Al Jazeera