The Yacoubian Building (film)

The Yacoubian Building
Hend Sabri Yousra
Cinematography	Sameh Selim
Edited by	Khaled Marei
Music by	Khaled Hammad
Distributed by	Good News Group (In Egypt) Arab Co for Cinema Production & Distribution (Worldwide distributor)
Release date	June 21, 2006 (2006-06-21)
Running time	165 minutes
Country	Egypt
Language	Arabic
Budget	$3.5 million[1]

The Yacoubian Building (

.

Background

Like the novel ostensibly set in 1990 at about the time of the first Gulf War, the film is a scathing portrayal of modern Egyptian society since the coup d'état of 1952. The setting is downtown Cairo, with the titular apartment building (which actually exists) serving as both a metaphor for contemporary Egypt and a unifying location in which most of the primary characters either live or work and in which much of the action takes place.

The actual namesake Yacoubian building, constructed in the Art Deco style, still stands in downtown Cairo at the address given in the novel: 34 Talaat Harb Street (referred to by its old name, Suleiman Basha Street, by both native Cairenes and the novel's characters). As in the novel, the film's version of the building is "in the high classical European style, the balconies decorated with Greek faces carved in stone."

After premiering at the

in 2006, the film opened in Egypt in June.

The Yacoubian Building was Egypt's official submission to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

Plot summary

The film opens with a luff tracing the building's history, as wealthy expatriate and Egyptian residents give way, after the

of Egypt and of the burgeoning population growth in its large cities in recent decades, especially among the poor and working classes. In the faded apartments of the main floors and on the building's teeming roof, the film's principal characters are introduced:

• Zaki Pasha el Dessouki (Adel Emam) – a wealthy and elderly foreign-educated engineer who spends most of his time pursuing women and who maintains an office in the Yacoubian, he personifies the ruling class prior to the Revolution: cosmopolitan, cultured, western in outlook, and not particularly observant of Islam
• Taha el Shazli (
  Jamaa Islamya
• Buthayna el Sayed (Hend Sabry) – initially Taha's childhood sweetheart, she is forced to find a job to help support her family after her father dies and is disillusioned to find that her male employer expects sexual favors from her and her female coworkers in exchange for additional money and gifts on the side, and that her mother expects her to preserve her virginity while not refusing her boss's sexual advances outright; embittered, she eventually comes to use her beauty as a tool to advance her own interests but finds herself falling in love with Zaki Bey el Dessouki, whom she'd been planning with Malak to swindle out of his apartment
• Malak (Ahmed Bedeir) – a shirtmaker and petty schemer seeking to open a shop on the Yacoubian's roof and then to insinuate himself into one of the more posh apartments downstairs
• Hatim Rasheed (
  homosexual
  in a society which either looks the other way or openly condemns such behavior and inclinations
• Hagg Muhammad Azzam (
  Nour El Sherif) – one of Egypt's wealthiest men and a migrant to Cairo from the countryside, in the space of thirty years he has gone from shoeshiner
  to self-made millionaire; he seeks an acceptable and legal outlet for his (temporarily) resurgent libido in a secret, second marriage to an attractive young widow, and also realizes his goal of serving in the People's Assembly (Parliament), but comes face to face with the enormous corruption, graft, and bribery of contemporary Egyptian politics.
• Christine (
  La Vie en Rose
  " punctuates the film.

The stories of each of the primary characters are intertwined, at times colliding or converging with one another. Together, they give a biting condemnation of a nation that has squandered its promise and which has been forced to compromise its own principles, resulting in a corrupt and undemocratic political system dominated by a single party (the fictitious "Patriotic Party", a thinly-veiled version of Egypt's National Democratic Party). The unlikely pairing of the elderly roué and the disillusioned young girl that ends the film provides a closing grace note that can be seen as a ray of hope against the death and unhappiness that has befallen the other characters.

Cast

• Adel Emam .. Zaki Pasha
• Nour El-Sherif .. Haj Azzam
• Yousra.. Christine
• Hend Sabri
  .. Bosaina
• Somaya El Khashab
• Khaled El Sawy .. Hatem Rasheed
• Issad Younis .. Dawlat
• Ahmed Bedeir.. Malak
• Ahmed Rateb
• Khaled Saleh
• Bassem Samra
• Mohamed Emam .. Taha El-Shazli
• Youssef Daoud

Commercial and critical reception

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (January 2020)

Having received the Adults Only seal from the board of censors in Egypt, the film debuted on June 25 to box office returns of over LE 6,000,000 in its first week, according to

TV series

After the success of the film in 2006, a

under the same name of Yacoubian Building was launched in 2007 with a major difference – the gay character in the film and the source novel was excised from the TV series adaptation of the novel because of its controversial nature.

References

Further reading

• Selvick, Stephanie. "Queer (Im)possibilities: Alaa Al-Aswany's and Wahid Hamed's The Yacoubian Building" (Chapter 8). In: Pullen, Christopher. LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media.
  ISBN 0230353517
  , 9780230353510.

External links

• BBC News: Egypt debates controversial film
• The Yacoubian Building at
  IMDb