Youssef Chahine

 Youssef Chahine



Father Amin (1950)

The Blazing Sun (1954)

Cairo Station (1958)



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3. Father Amin (1950)


The career of Egypt's most renowned filmmaker, Youssef Chahine, spanned almost 60 years. This prolific career had to start somewhere and that ignition point would come when the director was only 23 years old with his first feature-length film, 1950's "Father Amin." The film is a Dickensian tale of a father who watches over his family after death and must witness their complete disintegration. The son falls into melancholy, the mother must sell all their furniture to pay to keep their home, and his daughter must become a nightclub dancer and shirk her well-dignified suitor. As he watches all this from the afterlife, the titular father must reconcile with the state he left his father in after a bad business investment. It is a film you've seen the structure of many times before. But with Chahine's deft rendering, it's heart and tenderness will provide a fully engaging experience.  





2. The Blazing Sun (1954)


Youssef Chahine's 1954 film "The Blazing Sun" was Omar Sharif's feature film debut, but it was the film that made him a star. The film centers on an engineer who must save his father from the gallows after being framed for murder. Although the film deals with economic and social injustices - through the plot involving a wealthy landowner flooding the peasants' crop to save his profits - the real heart of the story lies in the relationships between the characters. Morality, injustice, and corruption are all played out through the human dramas that unfold. After the success of "The Blazing Sun," Omar Sharif went on to be a global star, even in Hollywood. The success of the film also helped Chahine's career, who would go on to make the internationally praised "Cairo Station" only four years later.




1. Cairo Station (1958)


Because post-revolution Egyptian audiences wanted more frivolous melodramas and comedies in 1958, they were displeased with Youssef Chahine's "Cairo Station," which centered on a mentally disturbed, homeless, disabled man. After being rejected by a beautiful soft drink peddler, the protagonist of "Cairo Station" acts out violently. His violent outbursts illustrate the growing bitterness, sexual repression, and demoralization of Egyptians unable to free themselves of the trauma of the toppled monarchy. After its fall, women's liberation, workers' rights, and sexual freedom started to take root in Egyptian society, along with a confluence of democratic ideas. As these newfound freedoms started to take root, the psychosis of oppression remained. Our mentally unstable and sexually repressed protagonist acts as the antithesis to this wellspring of rights and liberties. "Cairo Station" is a snapshot of a time in Egypt battling with its own identity and its social climate convulsing with new ideas, while accentuating the emotional social turmoil of its still-fresh oppression. 

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