Metrograph

One of the most expensive Egyptian productions of all time, underwritten by pioneering female producer Assia Dagher, Chahine’s historical epic, with an ensemble cast including Salah Zulfikar, Nadia Lutfi, Leila Fawzy, and Ahmed Mazhar in the title role, depicts the life of the 12th-century sultan Saladin, whose united Pan Arabic army would drive Christian crusaders out of Jerusalem, a figure both feared and admired by England’s Richard the Lionheart, foremost among his foes. A rejoinder to previously predominant Western depictions of the Crusades in cinema which Chahine, himself born into a Greek Catholic family, would describe as “above all a tribute to tolerance.”

Distributor: Janus Films