The Water Bearer Is Dead / El Saka Maat

• Release Date: 1977
• Type: Featured
• Run time: 143 Minutes
• Directed by: Salah Abou Seif
• Produced by: Jean Khoury
• Screenplay: Mohsen Zayed
• Cast: Farid Shawky, Ezzat El-Alaily, Shwekar, Amina Rezk, Taheya Karioka, Nahed Gabr, Hassan Hussein, Sherif Salah El Deen
• Cinematography: Mahmoud Sabou
• Art direction: Mokhtar Abdel Gawad
• Editing: Rachida Abdel Salam
• Costume design: Samia Abdel Aziz
• Music: Fouad El Zahery
• Sound: Nasry Abdel Nour
• Subtitles: English

Synopsis:

A powerful portrait of two men and the relationship that develops between them; One, the water bearer who has been mourning his wife for twenty years, the other, a mortician, who lives surrounded by death. The latter copes by trying to live each moment seeking the maximum pleasures life can give him. The encounter between these two opposites leads to a kind of synthesis that will affect them and their surrounding community. The story raises the question of whether need justifies theft. Is redistribution of wealth and property from the haves to the have-nots, through stealing, compatible with the divine scheme of justice where all property belongs to God and surplus is for the use of the needy?