Metrograph

Chahine’s rousing adaptation of Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi’s renowned 1954 novel sets its scene in the rural Egypt of the early 1930s, when feudal law still dictates much of the daily life of the peasantry, here faced with immanent catastrophe when a mandate passed down by an unscrupulous pasha places new limitations on the time in which they can irrigate their fields—a fate to which one tiller of the soil, Mohamed Abu Swelam (Mahmoud El-Meliguy), valiantly resists at risk of his own life. A full-throated call for collective resistance to abuses of power, not coincidentally conceived and shot in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and Egypt’s consequent loss of Sinai and Gaza to Israel.

Distributor: Janus Films