I Am Free

The film is set in urban Egypt in the years leading to the revolution of 1952. Amina is a girl still at school. She lives with her aunt and uncle, both of them controlling. The same household blocks her cousin’s wish to become a musician. Amina refuses the marriage arranged for her. Instead she goes to Cairo and starts at university. After that she takes an office job with an oil company. The story rests on her search for her own freedom and her own identity. The work is part of a trilogy Salah Abu Seif made about women. It is adapted from a novel by Ihsan Abdel Quddous, and Lobna Abdel Aziz takes the lead in this Egyptian film of 1959.