Youssef Chahine
Choubra, cosmopolitan neighborhood of Cairo. Hatem, maggoty police officer, handles this neighborhood with an iron hand. Every single citizen fears and hates him. Only Nour, a young woman he lusts after, dares stand up to him. But Nour is secretly in love with Cherif, brilliant and uncorrupted deputy public prosecutor. Green with envy, Hatem comes between. He wants Nour for himself. He whipsaws her and turns her life into a nightmare. The story of a frustrated love like Choubra experiences some since the mists of time.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
A young Chahine and his lead actress commiserate over the critical failure of their movie at Cannes.
An enthralling look at the relationship between America and the Arab World from an Arab perspective. It tells the story of Yehia, a renowned Egyptian filmmaker whose life has been shaped by a pair of disrupted love affairs, one with an American woman named Ginger, the other with America itself.
11 directors show their view on the terrorist attacks on the world trade center in New York.
A rollicking paean to the Hollywood and Bollywood musicals of yesteryear.
A documentary that focuses on Abbas Kiarostami's cinematic philosophy talking to himself and other figures, and also seeks the opinion about his works both inside and outside his homeland.
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.
The story is set in the 12th century in Arab-ruled Spanish province Andalusia, where famed philosopher Averroes is appointed grand judge by the caliph and his liberal court judgements are not liked by everyone. The caliph's political rivals, centered around the leader of a fanatical Islamic sect, force the caliph to send Averroes into exile, but his ideas keep on living thanks to his students.
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou's convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch's bizarre miniature epic.
A documentary series chronicling the life of egyptian director Youssef Chahine.
The biblical tale of Joseph is told from an Egyptian perspective in this interesting character study. In this film, Joseph is called Ram. Ram, tired of his family's backward superstitious life, and tired of being picked on by his brothers, wants to go to Egypt to study agriculture. His brothers travel with him across Sinai, but then suddenly sell him to Ozir, an Egyptian who works for a Theban military leader, Amihar. Amihar is impressed by Ram's drive and personal charm and so grants Ram some desolate land outside the capital. Ram soon finds himself a pawn in the political and sexual games between Amihar and his wife Simihit, a high priestess of the Cult of Amun.
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.
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.
Egypt, 1947: in the midst of a cholera outbreak. A washerwoman tries to take care of her family, while at the same time resisting the advances of a charming suitor who's half her age.
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.
Acclaimed actor Nour El Cherif here plays Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad some thirty years after we last see him in "Alexandria, Why?" Though successful in his work, Yehia 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 against the panoramic backdrop of war-torn Egypt, director Youssef Chahine tells a highly personal tale of love and determination. 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 one day studying filmmaking in America, but after falling in love and discovering the lies of European occupation, Yehia profoundly reevaluates his identity and allegiances.
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.
In this Andre Gide adaptation, an activist is released after many years in prison and returns home, shaking up established relationships among his family members at the farm governed by his strict father. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.
The construction of the Aswan dam as seen by those who took part in it: engineers and workers, Egyptians and Soviets. Beginning with the day the waters of the Nile were diverted, Chahine shows how individual concerns sometimes outweigh the myth surrounding a collective undertaking. The first Egyptian-Soviet co-production was shown to its two sponsor governments in 1968, inspiring considerable displeasure. Re-editing was demanded; along with newly shot sequences using actors. Consequently, the film was not shown until 1972.
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.
In a Moroccan village, a competition between two cousins takes place on the heart of their cousin Zubaida Tariq and the second Yasser, each of whom is married to a father, to marry Zubaida. The father agrees that the daughter will marry Yasser, and Tariq will travel to Spain to work in the bullfight. Zubaida runs away and refuses. Demanding that she return to Morocco so as not to search for her father, but remains next to him to achieve the good fortune Habib decides to go to SpainAnd revenge for Tariq and Zubaydah Tariq suffer from obsession because of the wealth achieved in one of the games hit by the bull force and wounded Yasser arrives at the time when Zubaida takes care Tariq Fit Refer to his position and return to Morocco.
(Syed) is a famous writer who climbed the top of the social and political pyramid in search of more. He is married to Sherifa, and is preparing to travel abroad to work for the United Nations, but he reads in a newspaper the news of the killing of his twin (Mahmoud), so he postpones his travel and calls the police to search for the killer of his brother, and it begins. On the search trip, the police officer has doubts about Syed.
When a free-spirited sailor is found murdered, his twin brother--a famous novelist--is the prime suspect. Investigators uncover a possible liaison between the dead sailor and the writer's wife, and also learn that Sayed's successful fictions owed much to the inspiration of his brother Mahmoud's adventurous life. Just as the evidence against the novelist seems overwhelming, Mahmoud turns up alive. But why are the twins never seen together...? In this very personal film, one can see the symbolic outlines of the uneasy relationship between Egyptian intellectuals and the problems of the proletariat.
Adapted from Abdel Rahman Al-Sharqawi's well-known novel of the same name, this classic film by Egyptian master Youssef Chahine was eight years in the making. Chronicling a small peasant village's struggles against the careless inroads of the large local landowner, The Land shows why political oppression does not necessarily lead to a sense of solidarity among the disinherited
Renegotiating the representational paradigm of nationhood the film draws a heterogeneous picture of Egyptian society as well as Soviet workers as they embarked on the momentous dam enterprise. The films presents a vision of a nation deep rooted in unity as well as diversity. The films projection of a renewed imagining of the nation inadvertently acknowledges a new and nuanced understanding of its goals, political objectives, and how these impact the personal within it. (KHOURI)
In a peaceful village, the mayor, seeing that the population is bored with tranquility, invents the mystical figure of Rajeh, and tells stories to villagers about the exploits of Rajeh, who kills and maims and steals. One day the mayor (Nasri Shamseddine) tells the villagers that Rajeh is heading to the village itself and they better be careful. Two smart men notice that the mayor was lying and that it is all his imagination. So they go on making good on the fictitious person and steal money and assault the mayor in the dark saying that they were Rajeh. Eventually, an old man with the name of Rajeh arrives in the village, amid public fears. Then it became obvious that Rajeh was merely a seller of rings for weddings and he wanted to marry his son to Fairuz the nephew of the mayor. The two bad guys willingly go to jail for making use of the mayor's joke.
The story of a 40-year-old married woman who has fallen into idleness and does not know how to approach the revolutionary events in her country. She finds a new meaning in life when she falls in love with an aspiring young student. “I shot FAGR YOM GUEDID in 1964. I count it among my best films and still stand by it completely. It is about the class whose assets were nationalized after the 1952 revolution. I explored the question of whether this class still had a place in Egyptian society.”
Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria, leads the Muslim military campaign against the invading Christians from Europe during the Third Crusade.
Jamila, an Algerian girl who loves her homeland, joins the nationalist movement to liberate her country from French occupation. Based on the life of Djamila Bouhired, who was arrested and tortured by the French Algerian government, Chahine's first explicitly political film managed to galvanize wide solidarity with the Algerian resistance from across the Arab World, starting in Egypt.
Qinawi, a physically challenged peddler who makes his living selling newspapers in the central Cairo train station, is obsessed by Hanuma, an attractive young woman who sells drinks. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss' exploitative and abusive treatment.
Horeya, the nurse is trying to help the patient Ahmed get out of his emotional shock.
He is forced to marry his cousin (Yasmina) after their uncle leaves them a large inheritance, provided that the two get married. The two accept marriage as a visual marriage and separate after receiving the inheritance, but during the honeymoon in Aswan they fall in love. Each other
Ragab, a poor sailor, returns home to Alexandria after three years of absence, during which he tried to save money to marry his one true love, Hamedah. But there's trouble on the harbor, and with an old friend.
In a tribal society, governor Zaid decides to raise taxes on the people, and sends his men to kidnap women, and with time his strength increase , up to the tribe of Bani Mazen, he kills a young man from the tribe at the hands of his men, prompting a friend to take revenge on the tyrant, Essam hide his face, and riding his horse, and hunt those man, Essam was able to save the pretty girl Dalal after being kidnapped by the men of the tyrant. The girl fell in love with him , and try to reveal him, the tyrant brought him to his castle and discovered his secret in the palace, but Essam escape from the palace, and gathered an army of knights attacking the castle ,the army was able to win the fight, Essam took the governance and married Dalal .
A rich landlord floods and destroys a village on purpose to prevent the people living there from making a profit off their crops. What he doesn't know is that his own daughter is in love with Ahmed, a young man from the village.
Hemaidah is a Farmer who hates country life. He hates working in fields and taking care of the animals in his farm. Though unsatisfied with her, he marries Zebeidah, a woman in the same village.
1950 Cairo, Amin is a simple employee who lives with his family of three, his wife Zahira, son Nabil and daughter Hoda. Amin’s friend Mabrouk convinces Amin to invest his life savings in a project, which he promises, will get him rich. Amin agrees but forgets to take a receipt. Amin suddenly dies and watches on from the after life.
