Al-Sarab

Eleven directors from eleven countries each contribute an eleven-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001: A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what's happened; city kids in Burkina Faso think they've spotted Osama bin Laden; a deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who left that morning for work at the World Trade Center; a Chilean remembers Allende; events recall other deaths; a mother endures more than her son's death. Tones vary, as do the locales. Most concern coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.

The lives of residents in an old Cairo building, "The Yacoubian Building," are affected by issues like corruption, extremism, class disparity, and sexuality. Through diverse characters, the film offers a critical examination of Egyptian society.

Before his death, Mansour Pasha writes over his wealth to his two sons Omar and Othman; as the latter drowns, his wife gets a boy and claims he is Othman's son to ensure her share in the inheritance. When the boy grows older, he befriends Rashad, Omar's son, and gates of hell and vengeance open.

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.

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.

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.

A poor girl leaves her fiancé, who works as a mechanic, and be friends a famous dancer, because she loves to dance. A wealthy man admires her, and the dancer persuades the girl to accept his offer of marriage because he will give her fame and glory, but her former fiancé decides to have revenge.

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.

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 and falls in love with two young Egyptian brothers, reflecting complex themes of colonial desire, affection, and personal connection.

In the 1960s, the lives of three college classmates, Ismail, Zainab, and Helmy, take a dark turn when the three of them are arrested and tortured as part of the repressive and violent practices that were employed by the General Intelligence Directorate back then.

The story revolves around Mursi (Adel Imam), a poor history teacher, married and suffering from an ambitious financial crisis in life, who gets involved with an old colleague at the university (Salwa), who runs her house for prostitution and hides him. Salwa uses the naiveté of Morsi to convince him that he attacked her He is drunk to press him to marry her pregnant.

Shousha El-Sakka, fears death because it took his wife. He meets with Shehata, and later knows that he is an undertaker assistant and he becomes pessimistic of him ,but when Shehata dies, Shousha is saddened by his passing.

A father loses his carpentry workshop after his son-in-law stops paying taxes regularly. His son Hassan, a bus driver, struggles hard to save his father’s workshop, while the daughters try to replace it with a new project inspired by the “Infitah” era.

Abdullah, a car driver, is accused in the murder of the thug Magdy and a friend of the Ghanaian Nawal. This criminal escapes after he tried to defend himself, but the events follow and he is also accused of killing the Ghanaian Nawal, he lands in one of the villas where Murad and his wife live with their young son, and Abdullah takes from the house residents Hostages so he can escape

The story of a young man from a lower-class family who falls in love with a wealthy girl. Despite the class difference and the obstacles they face, their love endures, and they must navigate the challenges posed by their families' social disparity and the economic hardships of the time.

On New Year's Eve, a taxi driver tries to raise money necessary for his mother-in-law surgery who takes care of his only mentally handicapped son. On the same night, a repentant prostitute tries to make money to fix her house . When they meet, they witness a night full of unforgettable events.

Adel Imam and neighbour Abdel Moneim Madbouly are taken to a Police station after an altercation with a bus conductor. They are mistakenly arrested with a group of suspected terrorists and taken to a maximum security jail.

As Rabab escapes from the cruelty of his stepmother and stays with an actress, she meets the young man, Ihsan, who tries to assault her inside his car, which overturns and dies. With his father’s attempt to take revenge on Rabab, she decides to flee again to Cairo to work as a teacher there under the name (Najwa). Then she met a colleague of hers and married him.

Two friends, Hamdi, an actor in one of the Rod El Farag theaters, and Ezzat the merchant, compete to win the heart of their neighbor Badriya. Hamdi marries her and they work together in a political play. The police chase Hamdi, so he seeks refuge with his friend Hussein. He happens to find his wife Badriya in Hussein's apartment, and Hussein tried to rape her. Hamdi thinks she is cheating on him, but he discovers the truth after it is too late.

Bahbah, Shiha, and Sanqur are three colleagues working in a newspaper whose editor-in-chief, Amer, stipulates that he should not be married to work there. Each of them was married and concealed his marriage. The three go to a hotel in Helwan to recuperate. There they meet Hosnia, who is searching with her uncle for a wealthy groom, and begins to set her nets on them, and events escalate.

Set in the 14th century. Under their leader Timur, the Tartar hordes invade the Middle East and take over areas as widespread as Persia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Syria. A lowly woman from a harem (Lubna Aziz) rises to lead the Egyptians against the invaders.

Mahgoub is a villager who moves to Cairo in search of a better life. When he enlists friend Salem's help to find him a job, Salem not only gets him a job at the ministry where he works but he finds him a bride as well. But the bride is the mistress of Qasem Bek, who will be visiting her once a week.

Hamed leaves his hometown and goes to Cairo to work as a gatekeeper in a building. He marries Fathia, who comes to live with him in Cairo. Fathia gradually learns to read and write and she aspires to work in a good job while Alaa who lives in the building tries to woo her.

Abdel Sabour was a thief and a smuggler known as The Beast to the people in one of the villages of upper Egypt; everyone was afraid of him, including the police. He enjoyed the protection of Redwan Pasha, who in turn used him during elections to eliminate his rivals. Officer Raouf Saleh was sent to the village with his wife and son with the assignment of arresting The Beast. However The Beast and his gang worked together from the beginning trying to dispose of the officer and his family in any way possible.

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

The film revolves around Jamal, who works as a translator and exchanges feelings of love with the girl Dalal, but the dancer Markad stands in the way of their relationship, which Jamal tries to resist in every way, which prompts Markad to frame him for a murder, and he travels to Italy, where he meets the maestro Cavallo, who gives him the opportunity to showcase his talent.

The story of Khalid Ibn Al-Walid (592-642) the greatest military leader in the dawn of Islam during the life of prophet Muhammad and his caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar.

3 young men aims older women for financial gains by working as gigolos,during a summer vacation,one of them targets a strict unmarried woman by making her fall in love with him to win her trust,meanwhile,his two friends struggles with their plans too before end of summer.

Salwa falls in love with Adel, the carefree young man, but her mother rejects this relationship, preferring him to the serious doctor Magdy, who treats her, and they actually marry to please the mother, but her heart is still attached to Adel.

Fatima lives with her father who moves from one house to another. She's in love with her neighbor, officer Salah. When she tells her father that Salah wants to marry her, she discovers thathat he's a fugitive from a prison sentence, and that her marriage to Salah will expose her father to imprisonment.

An athletic young man falls for a beautiful woman with a troubled brother. Handsome Yehia (Hafez) may come from a troubled background, but he's always strived to make the best of his life. When Yehia falls for the beautiful Samia (Iman), he believes he has finally found the woman with whom he could spend the rest of his life. Trouble soon arises, however, when Samia's delinquent stepbrother begins doing everything in his power to sabotage the couple's relationship.

A young man working in Alexandria marries his beautiful sweetheart, which is desired by a senior official in the Socialist Union uses his influence to get the husband unjustly imprisoned and sentenced to 25 years. And then comes out to avenge those who imprisoned him.

Hamida works as a saleswoman in one of the shops, and one day the painter Anwar admires her beauty. He offers her to work with him as a model , and she agrees. Later, a wealthy man offers to marry Hamida even though he has been married several times. But she's confused because she loves Anwar.

A girl and her boyfriend are swindlers who have successfully carried out previous frauds. When they find out that their neighbor has an amount of money that he is safekeeping for a friend, they devise a plan to swindle him.

This 2009 documentary by Mona Ghandour details the production of CAIRO STATION and includes interviews with director Youssef Chahine, screenwriter Abdel Hay Adib, and actors Hind Rostom and Farid Shawki.

When the prison car breaks down, the prison guard is forced to take the three prisoners to the nearest house to look for help, and the prisoners get into a lot of comedic situations.

Documentary essay about the First Moscow International Film Festival, held in August 1959, about its participants and guests - Soviet and foreign actors, directors who came to the film forum.

A girl leaves behind her past life as a dancer working in Mohammed Ali Street and enters college. Her ambition is to acquire knowledge and to leave behind her former life. She finds herself in a relationship with a young man from an affluent background and thus becomes conflicted between her two lives.

Fourteen year old Polish boy Stas Tarkowski and eight year old Nel Rawlison from England are kidnapped as the hostages by Arabic fanatics and taken to their religion leader. Then they manage to escape and try to return to their fathers. Children have a lot of dangerous adventures, meet two Black kids; Kali and Mea, who also help them, make a friendship with an elephant and help one Black's tribe.

Dr. Mamdouh suffers from his wife's jealousy, although he is faithful,while his brother, Massoud has a wife who is always busy with the children. Ezzat, their cousin, advises them to follow his approach with his wife Saneya: he cheats on her, and at the same time showers her with love and respect.

Working class Hassan and the rich Hanafi are rivals for Nawaeim's love. Going to the hospital to be treated for a horrible wedding night stomach pain, Hanafi receives an accidental sex change operation. After months of recuperation, he tries to pick up the pieces of his life as an unattractive, mannish woman named Fifi. She becomes the opposite of Hanafi. Where he was brusque, she is flirtatious.