Almost one year on from the first battles in Tahrir Square, Egypt’s future remains uncertain. Many Egyptians believe that, far from heralding in a new era of freedom, December’s elections are a sham, that they have been designed to give supporters of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood as large a slice of parliament as possible. Many feel that the torture, the corruption and the oppression that characterise much of the country’s modern history will continue unless the revolution succeeds in its struggle to create a true and open democracy.

Omar Robert Hamilton, an independent film-maker based in Cairo, has been at the epicentre of the Egyptian Revolution since the first days in Tahrir Square.  He was one of a group of film-makers and artists that started the recent Tahrir Cinema initiative and is now working with Mosireen, a media collective in Cairo. He shot the film shown below on Wednesday 2 February 2011, a pivotal day of the Eyptian Revolution. It depicts a battle that raged for over 24 hours when the men and women of the Revolution fought against Mubarak’s militia street by street, rooftop by rooftop, defending the square that still embodies the Egyptian struggle.