An Egyptian Story

Director: Youssef Chahine

1982 / 129min / Digital

Analogous to Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz in that it hinges on a near-death experience serving as an opportunity for taking stock of one’s life, the second film in Chahine’s autobiographical Alexandria Tetralogy opens with the director’s alter ego, Yehia—now played by Chahine himself—on the operating table before open-heart surgery in London (where Chahine had undergone the same procedure in 1973), imagining himself called upon to justify his life to date before a tribunal that takes place inside his own chest cavity. The survey of Yehia’s personal history—including a controversy-courting dalliance with a male chauffeur in the UK—offer sidelong glimpses of an all-but-disappeared cosmopolitan Alexandria of yesteryear, with Chahine’s profound affection for his vanishing hometown making this a deeply moving memory piece.

Distributor: Janus Films

Introduction by guest curator Alia Ayman on Sunday, October 19th