Movies: Seif Abdelrahman

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,...

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...

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 c...

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 wit...

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery and takes part in a cheap play. Defying his father's wishes, he moves to Paris to fulfill his dreams and starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs. Ali has a life-changing experien...

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 g...

The construction of the Aswan dam as seen by those who took part in it: engineers, workers, Egyptians, and Soviets....

In this intriguing and entertaining thriller, Khalid Youssef tells the story of a young, rich man (Hani Salama) who kills his wife and his brother when he finds them in bed together. After he evades prosecution we start to wonder whether the killings...

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 effec...

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 hand...

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....

An employee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decides to marry a girl of a higher social status. At a moment of recklessness,he sends a wedding invitation to the President, and he responds to the invitation. Preparations are under way to receive the...

Shahin puts his friend Kamel in jail instead for a crime he did not commit after he promises to raise his son Mahmood but Shahin deceives him to work has a servant and a driver....

Nubi, a wealthy man with Communist ties, sets out to find his half-brother Gamal, who has been disowned for being gay, to let him inherit his father's fortune. In the process, Nubi is supposed to kill Gamal's stepmother Raifa, a suspected drug dealer...

A hooker decides to repent after she gets married and gives birth, but when she discovers that her husband is an addict, she convinces two of her friends to steal some jewelry, but things do not go well after the apartment owner and her child were ki...

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....

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 muc...

In a small Upper-Egyptian village where people live in extreme poverty, a stranger arrives and calls on people to travel to the Gulf countries for job opportunities, so all of the village's grown-up men leave, except for the disabled grandfather and ...

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,...