The original story of Scheherazade was that she was the author of what became 1001 (Arabian) Nights, a series of stories that were the origins of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad. The story goes that King Shahry?r, betrayed by his first wife, married a new woman every day and had her killed the next morning. One woman, Scheherazade, was next up to be married to the King, and that night to stave off her own execution, she told him a story so enthralling that he spared her so that she could continue it the next night; a true cliffhanger ending. Of course the King wanted to hear how it turns out in the end, but Scheherazade kept it up for the next night and the night after for 1,001 nights until either the King forgot about his wife killing-athon or he simply didn’t care anymore.

This Scheherazade isn’t quite so dramatic, but it could still be argued that it’s about a woman trying to stave off death for just one more day. Hebba Younis (Mona Zakki) is an Egyptian talk show host renowned for holding the feet of governmental power players to the fire. She’s a thoroughly modern woman in a society that doesn’t always see that as an asset. But regardless, to her loyal fans, she’s a fierce advocate for the little guy (and gal). Hebba’s husband Karim Hassan (Hassan El Raddad) is a newspaper editor at a government run daily. He’s also a sycophant looking to climb the ladder to career success as his paper’s new editor-in-chief, if only his outspoken wife wasn’t so outspoken because her bad mouthing the government is really throwing salt in Karim’s game.

So Hebba is asked to tone down her rhetoric for the sake of her husband’s career, which you can only imagine goes over really well with this fiercely independent and feminist-minded woman. But Hebba’s been divorced once, which is dicey enough, another divorce could really cost her points even in the more liberally-minded circles she travels in. Hebba initially dislikes the notion of pursuing “fluff” but to her surprise she finds that chasing stories about three very unique Egyptian women offered far more interesting subtext and social commentary than she could have imagined. In a “be careful what you wish for kind of way” Karim discovers that his wife’s idea of soft journalism can be even more damaging (politically) than her hard-hitting stuff.

Yes, it’s a delicious though convenient reversal that further propels the story into even deeper examinations of a culture that might not like what it sees about itself. Zakki’s performance is a feisty Girl Friday spin that reaffirms the reporter in its classic Western film roll as the plucky advocate for the voiceless, or in this case, women who refuse to be subjugate to men as per tradition. Director Yousry Nasrallah plays hardball with a lot of traditional ideas, and although the stories within the movie sometimes strain melodrama and soap opera conventions, they are nonetheless well told and done with a lot of grace and humour (in some cases). The film on a whole is a cultural slaughter house for the typically conservative, male-centric Muslim culture in Egypt with the women seen as strong, smart and powerful while the male characters are concerned with social status and keeping up appearances.

Scheherazade is a surprising and thoughtful film that can be funny, sad, pointed and aggravating. Nasrallah’s play with the format, and the way he tells the stories within the story, keeps one on their toes. It’s a powerful film in the way it subversively seems like a romantic comedy almost, before painting more deeply a message that’s simple, perhaps overdone, but no less misunderstood: that women everywhere want the same things out of life. Perhaps trite in the modern west, but in Egypt these are audacious and forward thinking ideas. Scheherazade is a wonderfully made and engrossing movie about modern gender politics in Egypt.