Mohamed Radwan's #8 Film Selection for Edgar

The British occupation of Egypt began in 1882 and was extended until 1956, two years later after the Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 1954. Al-Mummia takes place in 1881. That is important.

Often credited by Egyptian critics and worldwide connoiseurs alike as one of the most important Egyptian films ever made - and if I am allowed to say, my third favorite film from Egypt - Al-Mummia is one incredible, spectacular and thought-provoking masterpiece about the search of a national identity, where the stellar cinematography and a haunting score are barely the technical highlights of a deeply symbolic testament made not with a camera, but with a collective heart.

Based on a true story, Al-Mummia…

they went to the desert and did not come out alive. heavy as the wind specked with dust. tired as the guardians of tombs with no faces. as eerie and vague as an unmoored boat with blue markings. many reviewers have chosen to focus on the conflict between the living- the city folk looking to save the tombs of the old pharaohs and the mountain folk grave-robbing for survival. it's the dead that shade this whole film for me however. are we nothing but the product of people who lived long ago? how do we carry the legacy of a nation against a legacy of our immediate family?

the characters stand upon nothing but graves. their desires and passions and…

An Upper-Egyptian clan robs a cache of mummies and sells the artefacts on the illicit antiquities black market. After a conflict within the clan, one of its members goes to the police, helping the Antiquities Service find the cache.

Bit unfair to rate and review The Night of Counting the Years because I must disclose to have fallen asleep during a good portion of it, but I (1) don’t have much desire to revisit this in the future, and (2) do hold Shadi Abdel Salam accountable for making me.* Besides, we’ve all been there right? I’m not just taking after my mother for whom TV is the best hypnotic/sedative in the world, right? (Give me some confirmation here guys). The Night…

For humanity, a required viewing. A film that takes place in turning point of nation's history makes it feels as if it is the turning point of the whole world; when dead suddenly gain their names and the mystery of death is beginning to solve itself. With Daesh today destroying cultural monuments, Westerners forgetting their histories and think that they speak with the voice of their nation whereas the echo of the history, the lessons of that great entity are forgotten and the voice becomes hollow, full of hate, the shock of this film is especially great today. Namely it describes moments when humanity (presented as a clan here) starts finding and defining itself again, Wannis' looks on his face…

Hailed as a neorealist classic, it’s neorealism in the way that Rossellini (who produced the film) was around this time, which is to say stylistically far beyond using the camera to ape a first-hand perspective with practiced lack of artifice. There are elegant compositions here of men dwarfed against inhospitable terrain, or arranged just so in group compositions. Some startling early shots place Wannis on the stairs descending into stone toward a family dwelling within the rock, frozen as his family does their peddling and the camera does a mild Hitchcock dolly-zoom to stress his alienation from the life he knew.

Other moments are as powerful. Wannis looking on in horror as his tribe and family loot an Egyptian grave,…

20 Film | 20 Countries
1. Egypt 🇪🇬

اية دة هو انتوا مستنيين رأيي فالفيلم بعد كل الريڤيوهات اللي قريتوها، اية هقول إن بعض القرارات الإخراجية معجبتنيش ولا أسلوب السرد غير موفق؟

يا راجل دة واحد من أعظم الافلام المصرية والعربية فالتاريخ عمل أصيل ومتفرد جدا وبيناقش قضايا مختلفة ومهمة من خلال أحداثه وشخصياته ومر ١٤٠ سنة ومازال في وسطنا قبيلة الحربات وعظيم جدا علي المستوي البصري كل كادر ممكن تصوره كلوحة فنية لوحدها والحقيقة شادي عبد السلام ملحقناش نستفاد من إمكانياته بشكل أكبر وخصوصا إنه توفي في حسرة علي فيلمه أخناتون اللي لم يتم إنتاجه وانا شخصيا حزين علي عدم إنتاج الفيلم لأنه كان هيبقي من الكلاسيكيات وتصوير عظيم للحضارة المصرية بعيون شادي ونقلة كبيرة للسينما المصرية.

ملحوظة: انا…

Four men climb into the crevice of a mountain barely touched by human hands. They descend deeper and deeper until they come upon a hidden tomb filled with the coffins of long dead pharaohs, dozens of them lying on the floor side-by-side. The two older men, elders of a poor Egyptian tribe, crack open one of the sarcophagi, stick a knife in the neck of the mummy, and pull from it a solid gold necklace. It shimmers as they bring it into the torch light and the score rises in a menacing drone. It soon becomes clear that their tribe has been pawning such artifacts on the black market for decades, forcing a reckoning between an older generation happily dependent…

I find myself continually drawn to stories set in the past filmed on location in the remnants of that past. Often there is a greater sense of antiquity when this artistic decision is made, unconsciously making one ponder how old these ruins are. Were they as old to the characters in the story as they are to the audience watching the film, or are the buildings older to them because the characters exist within the culture that once saw them as new? The sublime majesty of the archaic architecture haunts the stories they exist within, adding a subliminal reminder that these stories are history; what we are seeing are memories of cultures made celluloid. Oh, what it must've been to…

I think I spoke to soon, when I said Eyes without a face was full of people walking way to slowly...

Although I do jest, this films whole sense of temporality felt like an extremely slow walk, to the point when even the characters did run it still felt like they were walking. 
I’ve talked before about how I enjoy the temporarily of African cinema (particular West African) and its non conformity to the west’s sense of hyper efficiency, however this film felt different. It lacked the chaotic listlessness of those film, and instead had the quality of being listless but in a very measured manner, (perhaps and oxymoron, but also the only way I can understand the film’s unnerving…