The realist tradition in Egyptian cinema reached its apogee with filmmaker Salah Abu-Seif (1915-1996), generally seen as the godfather of neorealism too. Abu Seif’s 111th birth anniversary on 10 May coincided with the centennial of Youssef Chahine (1926-2008) this year. The latter is an ongoing celebration, “Chahine at 100”, which kicked off at El Gouna Film Festival with an interactive exhibition curated by Shereen Farghal and is ongoing at Zawya Cinema with a small exhibition of archival material including manuscripts in Chahine’s own hand and photos being shown for the first time, as well as a retrospective, “What Now, My Love”.
The Zawya programme (15 April-16 May) features early Chahine, the commercial period of his career, which he calls his spring, with his debut Baba Amin (1950), a comedy about a dead father who comes back as a ghost to watch over his family, cowritten by Chahine, Ali Al-Zorkani and Hussein Helmy Al-Mohandes and featuring Faten Hamama, Hussein Riad, Farid Shawki and Kamal Al-Shinnawi. It also includes films such as Nissaa Bela Regal (Women Without Men, 1953), Sayedet Al-Qetar (Lady of the Train, 1952), starring Laila Murad, as well as the romantic film Enta Habibi (You Are My Love, 1957), starring Farid Al-Atrash with Shadia and Hind Rostom.
The programme also features films by world figures that influenced Chahine or were in some kind of conversation with his work: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Jean Vigo’s Zéro de Conduite (Zero for Conduct, 1933) and Jean Grémillon’s Remorques (Stormy Waves, 1941) as well as Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned, 1950) and Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951).
The path of realism in the work of both Chahine and Abu-Seif started with the city’s mean streets the daily struggles. But, while Abu Seif’s work developed into the neorealist movement that begat figures such as Atef Al-Tayyeb, Daoud Abdel-Sayed and Khairi Bishara, Chahine’s journey took an autobiographical turn with political overtones. In Al-Asfour (The Sparrow, 1972) and Awdet Al-Ibn Al-Dal (Return of the Prodigal Son, 1976) the political focus was more pronounced, while his autobiographical tetralogy Iskendriya Leih? (Alexandria… Why?, 1979), Haddouta Masriya (An Egyptian Story, 1982), Iskendriya Kaman wi Kaman (Alexandria, Again and Forever, 1989) and Iskendriya New York (Alexandria, New York, 2004) has a wider range of concerns.
Chahine’s realism is most evident in his early masterpiece, Bab Al-Hadid (Cairo Station, 1958), in which he plays the disabled and mentally disturbed newspaper vendor Qinawi, who is in love with the soda seller Hannouma (Hind Rostom), whose own lover, the porter Abu-Serei (Farid Shawki), is busy starting a strike against the porters’ tyrannical boss. Though, like Buñuel’s Los Olvidados in Mexico, where it is set, the film was initially badly received — many viewers felt it presented a negative and shameful image of the country — it was a turning point in Arab cinema, becoming Egypt’s official submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Picture and nominated for the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear in 1958.
A later realist piece by Chahine is Al-Ard (The Land, 1970), written by Hassan Fouad and based on an eponymous novel by Abdel-Rahman Al-Sharqawi. It stars Mahmoud Al-Meligi, Nagwa Ibrahim and Ezzat Al-Alayli. Tacking the plight of the peasantry, it is one of Egypt’s most acclaimed productions, being on the 1984 Funoun magazine list of the ten best films in the history of Egyptian cinema.
As for Salah Abu-Seif, despite the occasional attempt to depart that framework such as the Lord of the Flies-like Al-Bedaya (The Beginning, 1986) — a fantasy on the surface, but a realistic feature underneath — he remained loyal to realism to the end, often relying on literature for inspiration. Al-Tariq Al-Masdoud (The Blocked Road, 1958), for example, was cowritten by Naguib Mahfouz — yes, the Nobel laureate, who was also a screenwriter — and Al-Sayed Bedeir, based on a novel by Ihsan Abdel-Quddous. The story revolves around a young woman, Fayza (Faten Hamama) who is opposed to her mother’s lifestyle choices and how said mother has turned their house into an informal gambling casino following the death of the father. When she meets her favourite author Mounir Helmy (Ahmed Mazhar), he turns out to be a character similar to her mother and wants to take advantage of her, so she moves to the countryside to work as a teacher before circumstances force her to come back and follow in her mother’s footsteps.
But Abu-Seif’s masterpiece must be Bein Al-Sama wel Ard (Between Heaven and Earth, 1959), in which a group of strangers end up trapped in a lift — lifts were a new invention then — when it breaks down, and their stories begin to emerge. There is the movie star (Hind Rostom), late for shooting on the roof of the building; the lunatic (Abdel-Moneim Ibrahim) who has just escaped from a mental asylum, chased by nurses; the thief (Abdel-Moneim Madbuli); and so on. When they begin to feel their chances of survival are low they begin treating each other better. Meanwhile, a jilted lover is trying to throw himself off the roof because the woman he loves — also in the elevator — is about to marry another man... This was written for the screen by Naguib Mahfouz, with a screenplay cowritten by Abu-Seif and Bedeir.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 May, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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