Karnak

Karnak (1975)

الكرنك

In the 1960s, the lives of three college classmates, Ismail, Zainab, and Helmy, take a dark turn when the three of them are arrested and tortured as part of the repressive and violent practices that were employed by the General Intelligence Directorate back then.

Date of release
1975-12-29
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (10)
Runtime
2h 20m
Genres
Drama
Director
Ali Badrakhan

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Karnak Café

Karnak is a 1975 Egyptian political film based on a novel written by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz with the same name, and directed by Ali Badrakhan and starring Soad Hosny. It includes an ensemble cast that includes Nour El-Sherif, Kamal El-Shennawi, Farid Shawqi, Taheyya Kariokka, Emad Hamdy and Shwikar. The film features Salah Zulfikar in a special appearance as Shoukry the rebellious member of parliament.

Production

Minister of Culture at the time, Yusuf Sibai objected to the presence of the leftist intellectual Helmy, played by the actor Mohamed Sobhi, and asked the film makers to clarify that the Sadat regime had nothing to do with the issue of torture that was taking place in prisons in the sixties. The process of adapting the novel and writing the script took about 10 months.

The late superstar Ahmed Zaki was cast for the character of Ismail El Sheikh, and because of the objection of the film's distributor to Ahmed Zaki, he was replaced by the actor Nour El-Sherif. The late superstar Salah Zulfikar agreed to appear for a few minutes in a special appearance as the rebel member of parliament Shoukry who was suppressed by Khaled Safwan. Actor Gamil Ratib was the first candidate for the role of Khaled Safwan.

After director Ali Badrakhan finished filming, the Presidency of the Republic asked to watch the film, and the filmmakers were asked to end its events with the decisions of the fifteenth of May Corrective Revolution made by President Sadat, in contrast to Naguib Mahfouz's novel, which ends with the setback of 1967.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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