I first watched Watch Out for Zuzu as a child on a VHS tape in my grandparents’ living room. The VHS tape stayed in the machine for months. I would rewind, rewatch and repeat. According to my mother, I just couldn’t get enough. Zuzu (Soad Hosny) was my first imaginary friend. It was love at first sight, a love which I think I inherited. When the film was theatrically released in Egypt in 1972, it was an instant box office hit. My mother, who was 6 or 7 at the time, couldn’t get enough of Zuzu either. She watched the film three times on the big screen, and countless times when it was shown on TV. To this day, both of us still rewatch the film on a regular basis. Zuzu was one of the longest running films in Egyptian theaters. Some claim it remains so to this day. For those of us who reject the false dichotomies between film as “high art” and popular cinema, our collective love for Zuzu is a testament to the fragility of such binaries, a refusal of elitism in all its forms and of course, and endless celebration of the immense talent, beauty and brilliance of Soad Hosny. — ALIA AYMAN