Synopsis
Au milieu du XIXe siècle, l’égyptologue Maspéro, au Caire, s’aperçoit que des tombes pharaoniques près de Thèbes sont pillées. Une mission se rend à Louxor et découvre qu’une tribu, depuis des siècles, vit du pillage de tombes dont elle seule connaît l’emplacement. À la mort du chef de cette tribu, le refus de ses deux fils de continuer ce pillage en conduit un à la mort et l’autre à la collaboration avec les archéologues.

Réalisation : Shadi Abdel Salam
Image : Moustafa Imam, Abdel Aziz Fahmy
Montage : Kamal Abou al-Ella
Musique : Mario Nascimbene
Costumes : Chadi Abdel Salam
Production : Organisme du Cinéma Egyptien

Interprètes
Ahmed Marei, Nadia Lofty, Ahmad Hegazi, Zouzou Hamdi-El Hakim, Shafik Noureddin, Mohamed Nabih


Dates de sorties en salles
Suède : 03 septembre 1973
USA : 22 octobre 1975 (New York City, New York)

Le film est en téléchargement gratuit [ici] sur Internet Archive

Set in 1881, on the eve of British colonial rule, it is based on a true story: an Upper Egyptian clan had been robbing a cache of mummies near the village of Qurna, and selling the artefacts on the black market. After a conflict within the clan, one of its members went to the police, helping the Antiquities Service find the cache.

The film casts this story in terms of the search for an authentic, lost Egyptian national identity (represented by the neglected and misunderstood artefacts of ancient Egyptian civilisation), but the conflict between city and countryside suggests questions that are not resolved in the film, making it an ambiguous, unsettling reflection on the price of identity.

Unusual camera angles, striking colours and slow editing give the film a dreamlike quality, reinforced by Mario Nascimbene’s eerie music. For those who know Arabic, the dialogue is entirely in classical Arabic, which adds to the sense of unreality.


Written and directed by Shadi Abd Al-Salam
Cast: Ahmad Marei, Ahmad Hegazi, Zouzou Al-Hakim, Nadia Lutfi, et al.
Music: Mario Nascimbene
Cinematography: Abd Al-Aziz Fahmy
Editing: Kamal Abu Al-Ela
Producer: Shadi Abd Al-Salam

Audio/Visual: sound, color
Language: Arabic
Keywords: Egypt; Mummy


By Creative Commons license: Public Domain, the entire movie is downloadable at the Internet Archive