Son of the Nile

Hemaidah is a farmer and hates country life. He has no liking for working the fields or for looking after animals. Even so he marries Zebeidah from the same village, and the marriage does not content him. The life he wants is somewhere else, and that place is not the village. In the end Hemaidah leaves the village for Cairo. The film shows that flight neither as deliverance nor as delusion; it shows what comes of it. The work is Youssef Chahine’s second feature and was selected for the Cannes competition in 1952. The hundred and five minutes are spread over several years. Faten Hamama and Shoukry Sarhan appear in Chahine’s Egyptian film, completed in 1951.