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 find myself very drawn to this hyper-masculine performance,” he tells Variety.
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. 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 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. It was very theme-driven, and it was very intellectual,” he recalls.
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