El Sett

El Sett (2025) tells the life of Umm Kulthum, and making this film at all took nerve in the Arab world. She was not simply a singer. In Egypt it is said the streets emptied when her concert went out on the radio on the first Thursday of every month. Her nickname was el Sett, the Lady, and she is still called that. Playing a figure like this is a nearly impossible assignment. The film opens in 1967, as she prepares to walk out at the Olympia in Paris. It is just after the Six Day War, Egypt has been defeated, and the concert's proceeds will go to the army. So the person going on stage is not a singer but the country. From there it moves backwards: a village childhood, singing dressed as a boy in a place that did not put girls on stage, her arrival in Cairo, her relationship with her orchestra, and her position inside the Arab nationalism of the Nasser years. Mona Zaki's best decision is not to attempt an impersonation. In the performance scenes the point is not the voice but the reaction of the hall. It runs 161 minutes and was written by the novelist Ahmed Mourad, a long standing collaborator of Marwan Hamed. It premiered at Marrakech. Good for: music biographies, Arab cinema, and history. Less good for: it is long, its reverence is heavy, and viewers who do not know the songs will not feel the weight of some scenes.