SAFAR Film Festival 2018: The Land
18 September '18 at 8:20 pm
THE LAND / El Ard + Q&A with curator Joseph Fahim and writer Ahdaf Soueif
Youssef Chahine | Egypt | 1969 | 130 min
World Premiere of the Restored Version
This 1969 masterpiece – voted 4th in Dubai Film Festival’s 2013 greatest Arab movies poll – is Egyptian film maker Youssef Chahine’s most beloved work in his home nation: a 1930s-set rural saga about a group of farmers attempting to save their land from feudal control. Adapted from Abderrahman Charkawi’s novel of the same name, the film was conceived as a reaction to the 1967 defeat to Israel. Both a passionate paean to peasant life and an examination of nationhood, individualism and masculinity, The Land remains an enduring classic.
