The Second Wife

Set in the Egyptian countryside, the film has at its centre an unjust village mayor who runs the place with his power. Having no child, he sets his eye on Fatma, the wife of one of the village’s poor men, and uses every means of pressure he has to take her. The story moves through what Fatma and her husband are put under, and the film gives it without hiding anything. The relation of power is not put in a romantic frame, and what coercion means is shown plainly. The mayor’s hold over the village builds the ground of the story, so the matter is more than one man’s appetite. Soad Hosny plays Fatma and Salah Mansour the mayor, with Shoukry Sarhan and Sanaa Gamil also in the cast. Salah Abu Seif’s hundred and twelve minute Egyptian film, shot in black and white, was completed in 1967.