Mameluke

In Arabic the word mameluke means a slave, a prisoner. In Egypt the name was given to prisoners of war sold into slavery from Georgia and from other places in the Caucasus. The film begins in Georgia at the end of the eighteenth century. Two friends are abducted and sold into slavery; one ends up in Egypt, the other in Venice. Years later the two meet in the desert, beside the pyramids. At that moment the army of Bonaparte and the forces of Ali-bey, the ruler of Egypt, are fighting there. The mameluke wounds the French officer facing him. Falling from his horse onto the sand, the officer cries out in Georgian, and the mameluke knows him for a friend from childhood. Dato Danelia and Otar Koberidze appear in David Rondeli’s ninety seven minute Soviet film, completed in 1958.