A gripping, ground-level chronicle of Egypt’s revolution that feels immediate, urgent, and emotionally lived-in. It’s strongest as a political and human document rather than a neatly resolved narrative, but its access, momentum, and intimacy make it essential viewing.
85% ★★★★☆ (16,712)
The Square
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Documentary · Drama
2013 · 1h 28m · ★ 85% (16.7K)
The people demand the downfall of the regime
Director: Jehane Noujaim
Starring: Khalid Abdalla, Dina Abd Allah, Dina Amer
Overview
The Square looks at the hard realities faced day-to-day by people working to build Egypt’s new democracy. Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the heart and soul of the film, which follows several young activists. Armed with values, determination, music, humor, an abundance of social media, and sheer obstinacy, they know that the thorny path to democracy only began with Hosni Mubarak’s fall. The life-and-death struggle between the people and the power of the state is still playing out.
Director
Jehane Noujaim
Production
Roast Beef Productions, Worldview Entertainment, Noujaim Films, The Othrs, MVD Entertainment Group, City Drive Entertainment Group
Cast
Khalid Abdalla, Dina Abd Allah, Dina Amer, Magdy Ashour, Ramy Essam, Ahmed Hassan, Aida El Kashef, Buthayana Kamel, Ragia Omran, Sherif Boray, Pierre Sioufi, Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi
Curator Review
Verdict
A gripping, ground-level chronicle of Egypt’s revolution that feels immediate, urgent, and emotionally lived-in. It’s strongest as a political and human document rather than a neatly resolved narrative, but its access, momentum, and intimacy make it essential viewing.
Best for
viewers interested in modern political history
audiences who like immersive, on-the-ground documentaries
people drawn to protest movements and civic resistance
fans of urgent, emotionally charged nonfiction cinema
Skip if
you want a tidy beginning-middle-end story
you prefer detached, explanatory documentaries
you’re looking for light or comforting viewing
you dislike films that end with uncertainty and unfinished struggle
Overview
The Square is less a retrospective history lesson than a front-row seat to a revolution still in motion. By staying close to young activists in Cairo, it captures the exhilaration of collective hope, the exhaustion of street-level organizing, and the brutal whiplash of state violence with unusual immediacy. The result is political cinema that feels lived rather than narrated from above.
Worth noting
What makes it so effective is its human scale. Instead of treating Tahrir Square as an abstract symbol, the film finds humor, fear, stubbornness, and grief in the people fighting there. Social media, music, chants, and spontaneous debate all become part of the texture of resistance, giving the film a restless energy that mirrors the instability of the moment.
Bottom line
It is also, by design, incomplete. The revolution is ongoing, the stakes keep changing, and the film cannot offer the comfort of closure. That unfinished quality may frustrate some viewers, but it is also what gives the documentary its force: it preserves a crisis as it is being endured, not after it has been safely packaged into history.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Scott Anderson (4.5★) · 83 likes
Whenever I see coverage on CNN regarding a major event, either domestic or in another country, I always wonder what it would be like to be there in the midst of the chaos or amongst the celebration, one of the small dots that hardly seem real through a television screen yet for them it is a moment that will live on forever. These moments obviously vary from the dangerous and terrifying that make me appreciate the safety of my home,
Paul Schrader · 69 likes
Watched doc "The Square" about Tahir Sq revolt against Mubarak. My god. Over decades and centuries nothing has changed about the oppression of the poor and powerless by the rich and empowered. It's the same story. Roman senators, princely medieval lords, European royal muckyups, Fox News (aka Republicans) military corporate industrialists--the same story, century after century. Money wins. Once money meant police thugs, now it means media thugs.
Rod Sedgwick (3.5★) · 36 likes
''The leaders play on top. The people pay the price for everything. The people always pay the price.'' A slice of life as seen from the ground level, almost as if you were part of the revolution, but is it the form or the content that makes this film worthy of such acclaim, of that I am not so sure. This feels like a moment in time, rather than capturing the true nature of an ongoing issue, which can only… more
Younis (4★) · 31 likes
“ احنا مابندورش على قائد احنا بندور على ضمير " الله يرحم كل الشهداء شاهده هنا
Steven Sheehan (4★) · 25 likes
2014 has started off with a number of strong releases and Jehane Noujaim's The Square is another to be added to that list. We are brought down to ground level into the heart of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, part of a movement dubbed the 'Arab Spring'. The surge of change that initially began in Tunisia has spread across the Middle East ever since, Egypt the second country to rise-up against their dictatorship rule. This powerful insight brings us unerringly close… more