Alexandrie...New York

Egypt, France

2004

128 Min

Color

Arabic, English

Currently 2.6/5 Stars.
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PROD Humbert Balsan, Gabriel Khoury, Marianne Khoury

SCR Youssef Chahine, Khaled Youssef

CAST Mahmoud Hemida, Hala Sedki, Magda El-Khatib, Nelly Karim, Mohamed Hasabo

Egyptian film director Yehia encounters his first love Ginger as he was being celebrated in New York. Back then they were 19 years old. The American Dream was the thing of the 20th century. Yehia, the boy from Alexandria, and Ginger, the American gal, were students at Pasadena Playhouse.40 years later, they are back together but the world has changed and the American Dream is no longer what it used to be. Yehia finds out that he had begotten an American child, a boy. Through a boisterous epic in which heroes love, sing, dance, laugh and cry, Youssef Chahine reconsiders his past and his ambiguous relationship to America which he loved so much. —IMDb

Director

Youssef Chahine

Youssef Chahine (born in Alexandria, Egypt, 1926) started studying in a friars’ school, and then turned to English College until the High School Certificate. After one year in the University of Alexandria, he moved to the U.S. and spent two years at the Pasadena Play House, taking courses on film and dramatic arts. After coming back to Egypt, cinematographer Alevise Orfanelli helped him into the film business. His film debut was Baba Amin (1950): one year later, with Ibn el Nil (1951) he was first invited to the Cannes Film festival. In 1970, he was awarded a Golden Tanit at the Carthage Festival. With Le moineau (1973), he directed the first Egypt-Algeria co-production. He won a Silver Bear in Berlin for Iskanderija… lih? (1978), the first installment in what proved to be an autobiographic trilogy, completed with adduta misrija (1982) and Iskanderija, kaman oue kaman (1990).

In 1992, Jacques Lassalle proposed him to stage a piece of his choice for Comédie Française… read more