Metrograph

Chahine made his name on the international festival circuit with this brooding noirish drama, in which the director himself gives a remarkable performance as a dull-witted newspaper vendor who returns home to a squalid shack papered with pinups after putting in his hours at the titular railroad hub, his smoldering infatuation with a sexy lemonade saleswoman (Hind Rostom) building slowly to an uncontrollable conflagration that will consume them both. A work without precedent, in both formal and thematic daring, in Egyptian popular cinema. With Cairo as Seen by Chahine, a city symphony film that doubles as a self-portrait of its maker, commissioned by French television and banned in Egypt for its warts-and-all depiction of the capital city.

Distributor: Janus Films

Introduction by Alia Ayman on Friday, October 17th