Egypt’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, 28-year-old
director Hamed’s debut feature stars a veritable who’s who of Egyptian
film actors.

The 70-plus-year-old Yacoubian was once the toast of Cairo, a massive
apartment building populated by the city’s movers and shakers. By the time
Hamed’s story picks up, the building has fallen into a state of disrepair
that is reflected in its residents. A straightforward series of
interweaving vignettes based on Alea El Aswani’s popular novel, capture
the seamy lives of The Yacoubian’s tenants, touching on taboos rarely seen
in Egyptian cinema, including religion, homosexuality and abortion.

A microcosm of Egyptian society — with its rich inhabitants living in
luxurious apartments and the poor on the roof, the businessman who bribes
his way to power; the rich son of a playboy who only appears interested in
prostitutes; the relationship between a homosexual journalist and the
porter’s son, who becomes a terrorist after been rejected by the police
academy, and love story out of a Forties Warner Brothers musical.

“At times, the film…is epic in scope. At others, it’s intimate and
tender…a window into a culture that few of us get to see.” (Los Angeles
Times) “Compulsively watchable” — John Griffin, Montreal Gazette
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Jim Brunzell
Print Traffic Coordinator
MN Film Arts
309 Oak St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-331-7563

Where Alaa Al Aswany Is Writing From

By PANKAJ MISHRA
Published: April 27, 2008

One evening last fall I joined a small crowd in a dusty room off busy Qasr-Al-Nil street in Cairo, facing a banner that read, “Welcome to the Cultural Salon of Dr. Alaa Al Aswany.” Many of those seated around me seemed to be simple celebrity spotters, there to see in the flesh the biggest-selling novelist in Arabic, Al Aswany, who is also an increasingly bold critic of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime...More