An Egyptian Story / Hadouta Masriya

• Release Date: 1982
• Type: Featured
• Run time: 125 Minutes
• Directed by: Youssef Chahine
• Produced by: Misr International Films
• Screenplay: Youssef Chahine
• Cast: Mahmoud El-Meligy, Nour El Sherif, Yousra, Mohamed Mounir, Mohsen Mohy El Deen, Ahmed Mehrez, Ragaa Hussein, Seif El Deen, Soheir El Bably, Magda El Khateeb, Ragaa El Gedawy, Laila Hamada
• Cinematography: Mohsen Nasr
• Art direction: Fakhry El Leithy
• Editing: Rachida Abdel Salam
• Costume design: Ezzat Said, Khayrat Gad El Mawla
• Music: Gamal Salama
• Sound: Magdy Kamel
• Subtitles: English, French

Synopsis:

The sequel to the autobiographically inspired Alexandria, Why? , An Egyptian Story covers the beginning of Chahine’s career up to his open-heart surgery in 1973. Chahine plays his alter ego Yehia, who gains international fame in Europe only to discover that, as in Egypt, film is as much commerce as it is art. The section of the film dealing with Chahine’s heart attack and surgery contains two remarkable sequences. In one, Yehia travels to London for the surgery and becomes infatuated with a (male) British cab driver. The other brings the film to a phantasmagoric climax as Yehia, on the operating table, imagines himself forced to justify his life and work before a tribunal in an eccentric sequence inspired by Chaplin, 8-1/2 and All That Jazz (Harvard Film Archive).