A Cairo patriarch lives double lives while his sons choose revolution or hedonism — family dinner just got explosive.
The life paths of the family of Mr. Ahmed Abdel Gawad during the period of the British occupation, and before the outbreak of the 1919 revolution, starting with the family's patriarch who lives a double life, his son Fahmy who joins a secret political organization, and the older son Yassin who follows his father's footsteps in pursuing women.
Acting
Yehia Chahine's patriarch — charming, monstrous, utterly magnetic.
Production
Cairo mansions as characters: one respectable, one very much not.
Director
Hassan Al-Imam
Yehia Chahine
السيد أحمد عبدالجواد
Abdel Moneim Ibrahim
ياسين عبدالجواد
Salah Qabil
فهمي عبدالجواد
Amal Zayed
أمينة
Zizi El-Badrawy
مريم رضوان
Maha Sabry
السلطانة زبيدة
Hala Fakher
عائشة عبدالجواد
Sohair El Barooni
خديجة عبدالجواد
Zouzou Nabil
أم ياسين
Ezzat Al Alaily
إبراهيم - طالب جامعي
Mohamed Reda
محمد عفت
Mimi Chakib
جليلة العالمة
Rashwan Tawfiq
محمد كامل - ضابط قسم الجمالية
Souad Ahmed
Thuraya Fakhry
طيفه هانم
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Adapted from Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy — this film drops you into pre-revolutionary Egypt when social masks were everything.
Hassan Al-Imam's direction lets the mansions breathe — the respectable one feels claustrophobic, the pleasure house almost liberating by contrast.
EG
