Freed after spending years in prison, an activist's homecoming turns into a dark affair as his disillusion clashes with his family's expectations. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.
Filmmakers from all over the world provide short films – each of which is eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame of film in length – that offer differing perspectives on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In Cairo on her own as she waits for her husband, Juliette finds herself caught in a whirlwind romance with his friend Tareq, a retired cop. As Tareq escorts Juliette around the city, they find themselves in the middle of a brief affair that catches them both unawares.
In the 12th century's Andalusia lives Ibn Rushd a prominent Islamic philosopher with his wife Zeinab and daughter Salma. The principality is ruled by Khalifa ElMansour who has two sons, ElNasser, an intellectual that likes Ibn Rush and is in love with his daughter Salma. The younger son Abdallah is more into dancing and poetry, spending most of his times with the gypsy family and getting the daughter pregnant. The Khalifa is depending on the extremists to build his army granting them more power which they use to combat artists and philosophers. The extremists succeed in recruiting Abd Allah and train him to kill his father. Events go on where Marawan, the gypsy singer, is killed and Ibn Rushd's books are burnt. Adapted from the real life of Ibn Rushd AlMasir is Chahine's statement against extremism.
Hatem is a corrupt police officer, who loves his neighbor Nour, who in turn loves the prosecutor, Sherif. Hatem tries to win Nour’s attention even if by force.
This big-budget historical epic from acclaimed Egyptian director Youssef Chahine features a crazed turn by Patrice Chereau as Napoleon Bonaparte. The film, an Egyptian-French co-production, deals with Napoleon's occupation of Alexandria and its effect on a typical Egyptian family. Michel Piccoli leads the cast as a general in Napoleon's army who tentatively befriends a local poet.
Set shortly before and during the Six Day War in June of 1967, The Sparrow follows a young police officer stationed in a small village in Upper Egypt whose inhabitants suffer from the harassment of a corrupt businessman.
Amid the poverty, death, and suffering caused by World War II, 18-year-old Yehia retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of studying filmmaking in America but struggles to pursue his dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.
Adam is the son of a wealthy Egyptian-American family who is studying at UCLA and returns home for a brief vacation. Upon his arrival he meets beautiful reporter Hanane, with whom he begins an intense love affair, and eventually they marry. Trouble arises when Hanane' s journalistic interests lead her to the corrupt business affairs of Adam's parents, who are interested in building an American tourist compound that would allow Americans further control of Egypt's tourist industry, and make them a whole lot richer.
After we last see him in "Alexandria, Why?" Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad is in his thirties, and successful in his work, he has grown distant from his wife and children and suffers a symbolic blockage of the heart while shooting the final scenes of his latest film. After being flown to England for evaluation, it's determined that Yehia must undergo emergency surgery. Fact and fiction blend seamlessly—with healthy doses of cleverly absurdist fantasy—as the film explores the various personalities and forces that have made Yehia (and Youssef Chahine) the man he has become.
Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in "Alexandria, Why?" and "An Egyptian Story". Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.
The story of the friendship that develops between two men with quite different world views. One, a water carrier whose wife has died twenty years before, spends his days thinking about her. The other, who works in the funeral business, spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure because he recognizes that death will bring an end to all enjoyment. They meet and become friends. Through this friendship the water carrier is encouraged to change his morbid way of thinking and to enjoy life.
Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.
Hassan has been haunted by feelings of guilt ever since his mother and sister died. He faces a challenging situation with his new job as the driver and bodyguard of a teenage girl, which may possibly help him redeem himself.
The authorities summon many young men for forced labor in the Suez Canal, so Metwally leaves his sister Shafiqa alone with their old grandfather, whereupon Shafiqa is forced to succumb to the temptations of Diab, the district chief's son. As their sinful relationship is revealed, she is forced to leave for Asyut, where she becomes the mistress of Al Tarabishi, the supplier of slaves.
In June 1945, during the final days of WWII, former university professor Gohar meets a young prostitute in a brothel and kills her in a moment of frenzy. Police Detective Noureddine takes on the murder case and tracks down Gohar, hoping to confront him and get a confession to the murder from him. However, both the detective and the killer face startling facts that change the way they think.
This concise masterpiece began as a commission by French TV for the news series Envoyé spécial. By filming Cairo with his unique sense of artistic digression, Chahine transformed this portrait of a city into the self-portrait of a filmmaker.
The fictional story of an advanced washing machine that's also a time-traveling machine. However, what it truly offers is conflicts and ironies upon its users.
Set in the summer of 1961 during President Nasser's land reforms, this is a story of the childhood friendship between Yasser, the son of a bourgeois landowner, and Leil, the son of an Egyptian peasant. When turbulent times tear Yasser's family apart, the boys team up for a money-making scheme that results in misadventures.
Six strong-willed women whose adventurous streak changed the face of film industry in early twentieth century Egypt – a time when the country was, despite the liberal ripples, still steeped in conservative tradition. The film shows how these women, different as they were in class and social background, broke taboos and dismissed conventional wisdom to fulfill their overpowering passion for filmmaking. Women Who Loved Cinema takes us to the past and brings us, seamlessly, to the present day. Aziza ... Fatema ... Behidja ... Amina ... Assia … Mary... theirs is a story that will remain indelibly etched in the memory of Egyptian cinema.
