Egyptian filmmaker Muhammad Mustapha’s “Big Boys Don’t Cry” follows a group of Cairo bodybuilders and nightclub bouncers, offering a view into how men understand and perform masculinity.
The documentary, which had its world premiere in the Feature Documentary Competition at Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, grew out of Mustapha’s curiosity about this particular group of men and questions about his own understanding of masculinity.
“I’m a feminist. I’m intellectual. I find myself very drawn to this hyper-masculine performance,” he tells Variety. “I should know better, right? And so this was the question: Why am I so intrigued?”
Mustapha distinguishes that curiosity from a desire to investigate something he saw as inherently wrong. When he began the project in 2016, he approached it as an anthropological and sociological study of masculinity and how it is expressed in different contexts.
His own upbringing gave him a point of reference. Mustapha grew up in what he describes as a “local” Cairo neighborhood, where he was surrounded by its masculine codes. As a studious “nerd,” he could be seen as less masculine there. But when he entered dental school, the same behavior could instead make him appear loud or vulgar.
That contrast helped him recognize how masculinity could shift according to context, a fact he also saw among the men he was observing.
“How they perform their masculinity on stage is different than in front of the pub, is different than when he is addressing a problem, different than when he is with his family,” he says.
It took roughly three years for that initial exploration to develop into a film, as Mustapha’s relationship with the men deepened and he was forced to examine his own views of masculinity.
That relationship also informed how “Big Boys Don’t Cry” was made. Mustapha rejects the idea that documentary filmmaking can ever be entirely observational, arguing that a camera inevitably changes what happens in front of it. The men became collaborators, at times proposing situations themselves.
“I wouldn’t say I made this film alone. I would say I made it with the characters. We made it together.”
One of the film’s central figures is Abdallah, with whom Mustapha spent a year before filming began. Mustapha initially believed the film would be driven by its ideas about masculinity, only to discover in the edit that their friendship had become its emotional throughline.
“I thought there was no emotional arc in the film. It was very theme-driven, and it was very intellectual,” he recalls. “At the end, while we were editing, I discovered that the emotional core of the film is actually our friendship.”
Building that relationship also meant giving the men control over what they shared. Participants could ask for material to be removed throughout the process, including during the final edit.
“I earned their trust. It was not given to me,” he affirms.
The absence of women is equally intentional. Mustapha wanted to observe the men in an exclusively male environment, which he compares to peeking into a gym locker room. Introducing women, he believed, would “change the equation.”
For Mustapha, the questions at the heart of “Big Boys Don’t Cry” extend far beyond Egypt. While masculinity takes different forms across cultures, he sees restrictions on men’s emotional expression as painfully universal.
“The only emotion men are allowed to express is anger,” he argues. “Imagine how distorted the male psyche is because of all this suppression of emotions.”
The El Gouna premiere brings “Big Boys Don’t Cry” back to a major stop in its development. Mustapha brought the project to CineGouna, the festival’s industry arm, in 2020 before it went on to receive support from the Doha Film Institute, Red Sea Film Fund and Germany’s Robert Bosch Foundation.
“It’s a full circle moment,” he reflects. “I’m very excited to show it to people in Egypt, though I’m slightly nervous.”
The film’s decade-long development has also led Mustapha to reflect on how independent films are made in Egypt and the region. He wants filmmakers to take more artistic risks and focus on local audiences rather than on the whims of international festivals and programmers.
“We need to work with less budget, with less financial risk, and more artistic risks.”
And above all: “Tell our stories to our audience.”