MISR International Films

Filmmakers from all over the world provide short films – each of which is eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame of film in length – that offer differing perspectives on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This big-budget historical epic from acclaimed Egyptian director Youssef Chahine features a crazed turn by Patrice Chereau as Napoleon Bonaparte. The film, an Egyptian-French co-production, deals with Napoleon's occupation of Alexandria and its effect on a typical Egyptian family. Michel Piccoli leads the cast as a general in Napoleon's army who tentatively befriends a local poet.

In Cairo on her own as she waits for her husband, Juliette finds herself caught in a whirlwind romance with his friend Tareq, a retired cop. As Tareq escorts Juliette around the city, they find themselves in the middle of a brief affair that catches them both unawares.

Freed after spending years in prison, an activist's homecoming turns into a dark affair as his disillusion clashes with his family's expectations. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.

Adam is the son of a wealthy Egyptian-American family who is studying at UCLA and returns home for a brief vacation. Upon his arrival he meets beautiful reporter Hanane, with whom he begins an intense love affair, and eventually they marry. Trouble arises when Hanane' s journalistic interests lead her to the corrupt business affairs of Adam's parents, who are interested in building an American tourist compound that would allow Americans further control of Egypt's tourist industry, and make them a whole lot richer.

After we last see him in "Alexandria, Why?" Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad is in his thirties, and successful in his work, he has grown distant from his wife and children and suffers a symbolic blockage of the heart while shooting the final scenes of his latest film. After being flown to England for evaluation, it's determined that Yehia must undergo emergency surgery. Fact and fiction blend seamlessly—with healthy doses of cleverly absurdist fantasy—as the film explores the various personalities and forces that have made Yehia (and Youssef Chahine) the man he has become.

Hatem is a corrupt police officer, who loves his neighbor Nour, who in turn loves the prosecutor, Sherif. Hatem tries to win Nour’s attention even if by force.

Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in "Alexandria, Why?" and "An Egyptian Story". Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.

In the 12th century's Andalusia lives Ibn Rushd a prominent Islamic philosopher with his wife Zeinab and daughter Salma. The principality is ruled by Khalifa ElMansour who has two sons, ElNasser, an intellectual that likes Ibn Rush and is in love with his daughter Salma. The younger son Abdallah is more into dancing and poetry, spending most of his times with the gypsy family and getting the daughter pregnant. The Khalifa is depending on the extremists to build his army granting them more power which they use to combat artists and philosophers. The extremists succeed in recruiting Abd Allah and train him to kill his father. Events go on where Marawan, the gypsy singer, is killed and Ibn Rushd's books are burnt. Adapted from the real life of Ibn Rushd AlMasir is Chahine's statement against extremism.

Amid the poverty, death, and suffering caused by World War II, 18-year-old Yehia retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of studying filmmaking in America but struggles to pursue his dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.

Set shortly before and during the Six Day War in June of 1967, The Sparrow follows a young police officer stationed in a small village in Upper Egypt whose inhabitants suffer from the harassment of a corrupt businessman.

Nubi, a wealthy man with Communist ties, sets out to find his half-brother Gamal, who has been disowned for being gay, to let him inherit his father's fortune. In the process, Nubi is supposed to kill Gamal's stepmother Raifa, a suspected drug dealer, before she can kill his half-brother.

When Ali and Mona's car breaks down en route to a party, the couple seek the nearest house to make an emergency call, only to find that they've arrived at the home of the revered Count Dracula. An unfaithful remake of the musical cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Although the story is apparently the same, Shebl’s film is almost too homoerotic to handle. Weaved into its camp aesthetics, horror genre tropes and 80s disco numbers, Anyab provides a running commentary on the social situation in Egypt, from youth unemployment to class struggle, while intersecting sexual politics into the mix.

The authorities summon many young men for forced labor in the Suez Canal, so Metwally leaves his sister Shafiqa alone with their old grandfather, whereupon Shafiqa is forced to succumb to the temptations of Diab, the district chief's son. As their sinful relationship is revealed, she is forced to leave for Asyut, where she becomes the mistress of Al Tarabishi, the supplier of slaves.

A suspense thriller that revolves around a pregnant woman who carries a lot of mysteries about her pregnancy, and her relationships with the people around her.

In June 1945, during the final days of WWII, former university professor Gohar meets a young prostitute in a brothel and kills her in a moment of frenzy. Police Detective Noureddine takes on the murder case and tracks down Gohar, hoping to confront him and get a confession to the murder from him. However, both the detective and the killer face startling facts that change the way they think.

The story of the friendship that develops between two men with quite different world views. One, a water carrier whose wife has died twenty years before, spends his days thinking about her. The other, who works in the funeral business, spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure because he recognizes that death will bring an end to all enjoyment. They meet and become friends. Through this friendship the water carrier is encouraged to change his morbid way of thinking and to enjoy life.

The fictional story of an advanced washing machine that's also a time-traveling machine. However, what it truly offers is conflicts and ironies upon its users.

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery and takes part in a cheap play. Defying his father's wishes, he moves to Paris to fulfill his dreams and starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs. Ali has a life-changing experience there that he won't fully remember until he returns to Egypt.

Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.