(CNN) -- A revolution squeezed into its margins -- but that's where it started.

It is February 11, 2014. Three years ago today, I walked to Tahrir Square to celebrate the fall of a dictator. In that square, we felt everything was possible, after Mubarak's 30-year rule. It's that feeling a recent film, "The Square" tried to capture. I resisted watching this Oscar-nominated film for weeks. I was in Egypt for many of the events it portrayed, and I knew I'd be emotionally riven if the film were even partially accurate. Indeed, it was painful to watch a film that captured so many of the core emotions of the past three years, and did it so well.

The film did not portray my own memories: it mediated the emotional history of the revolution through the subjective experiences of certain key characters. They were all archetypes of the revolution. I wondered -- would the filmmakers do what so many writers on Egypt have done, and go for the easy way out, focusing on spoiled rich kids, playing revolutionary? They didn't -- the first revolutionary character, Ahmad, is hardly rich -- he's a young, middle class, average Egyptian. Another central character is Magdy -- a loyal member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group. Ahmad has struggled economically his whole short life -- Magdy has spent time imprisoned for his political beliefs.

(H.A. Hellyer, CNN, Feb. 11, 2014) Read Original