Amr Alfiqy/Northern Lights

After the 2013 military coup in Egypt, youth with the financial and educational background to escape the reality that was shaping their country, did. Northern Lights aims to bring forward stories of a set of Egyptian post-revolutionary youth who, like me, landed in New York City. Many of them are/were doctors, engineers, filmmakers, dentists, and lawyers, but, unable to work with their degrees in the US, are now working as food vendors and short order cooks.

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I am interested in the intertwined narratives of old immigrants with new, how the new build community and collective solidarity in a society that values individualism, and how they cope with the bitter reality of the daily New York grind and their unrelenting dreams. Their passions range from politics and feminism to philosophical debates about life, but their new lives chip away at the fervor for the revolution they worked for back home. My intent is to focus on how these changes entail denial, anger, and acceptance. The question remains, In what part of their narrative and journey does their revolution still exist?

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