Destiny

Youssef Chahine's 1997 film turns on Ibn Rushd, the philosopher living in twelfth-century Andalusia. Under political pressure, the Caliph El Mansour orders all his works burned, and his students decide to copy the texts secretly and smuggle them out of the country. Chahine builds this not as a history lesson but as a popular tale with songs and dancing, deliberately colliding a serious question in intellectual history with the form of mainstream Egyptian cinema. Its actual target is the present, not the past: a defence of critical thought and freedom of expression in a society where fundamentalism is rising. Chahine's own films had met censorship, so the argument comes from a personal place. The film won the fiftieth anniversary grand prize of the jury at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Who it's for: viewers interested in Arab cinema, historical epics and films about freedom of expression. Who it's not for: anyone wanting historical accuracy and a scholarly portrait of Ibn Rushd, or who will feel the musical sequences interrupt the story.