The perception in the Arab world now is that we are having secularists against Islamists, and that's it. So the secularists are progressive; the Islamists are reactionary, conservative. This perception is wrong.
Of course, there's always one theater that shows some kind of European film. Now, fortunately, you have DVDs, so it's possible to get anything you want within a few hours. In those days, it was virtually impossible to get Italian films, or German films, or whatever. So I grew up with very standard, mainstream films.