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Yousry Nasrallah

Yousry Nasrallah

Directing

Biography

Yousry was born in Cairo in 1952 to a Coptic family. He studied economics at Cairo University before studying cinema at the Higher Institute for Cinema in Cairo in 1973. Initially, Yousry worked as a cinema critic for a Lebanese paper named al-Safeer and as a director’s assistant in Beirut. He also worked as a director’s assistant with Youssif Chahine on the film projects “Wada’an Bonaparte” and “Hadoutta Masriyah” (1981). Furthermore, Yousry also worked with Folker Shlondorf on “al-Muzayyaf” and with ‘Umar Amiraly on the documentary title “Massaib Qoum”. Next, he participated in writing the screenplay for “Iskandiriyah Kaman wa Kaman” (1989) with Youssif Chahine and worked with him again in directing “al-Qahira Menawara bi Ahlaha” Yousry directed his first feature-length film in 1990, the work titled “Sariqat Sayfiah”, his second feature-length direction work was “Mercedes” (1993). Thereafter he directed “Sibbyan wa Banat” (Boys and Girls) in 1995 and “al-Madeena” (The City) in 1999. One of his best-recognized works “Bab al-Shams” (Gateway of the Sun) came about in 2004 and his last work was in 2008’s “Geneinat al-Asmak” . Yousry has offered audiences a unique view through his works and has tried to use his films to portray clearly the mindset of Egyptian society and its psychological constituents. His first feature-length work “Sariqat Sayfiah” (Summer Thefts) was perhaps influenced by his own life story as it relates to the life of his wealthy Coptic feudal family and the farmers.

Known For

This Other Thing
7.5

An Arab anthology drama unfolding across six cities — Beirut, Cairo, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, and El Gouna — weaving together separate stories about love in its many forms: right person, wrong time; wrong person, right time; love lost, love deferred. Featuring a stellar pan-Arab cast, each episode is a self-contained meditation on modern relationships and longing.

This Other Thing

2020
Welcome Home
7.7

Assigned to investigate the revengeful murder of an unknown man, Adam begins to uncover the truth through torn photographs he finds at his house.

Welcome Home

2022
Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story
6.4

Heba is a TV presenter interested in broadcasting stories that touch on the everyday secret lives of women and the social injustices they face. Her frank style in broadcasting puts her husband's job and consequently her marriage in jeopardy.

Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story

2009
Alexandria Again and Forever
4.9

Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in "Alexandria, Why?" and "An Egyptian Story". Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.

Alexandria Again and Forever

1989
18 Days
6.9

10 filmmakers provide 10 separate stories focusing on the 18 days of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Ten stories they have experienced, heard, or imagined.

18 Days

2011
After the Battle
6.6

Reem is a young political activist who works for an advertisement company. As she tries to uncover the truth behind the incide of the Battle of the Camel, she accompanies her friend Farah to Nazlet Al Seman where she meets and falls for Mahmoud, one of the people involved in the incident.

After the Battle

2012
Adieu Bonaparte
5.9

This big-budget historical epic from acclaimed Egyptian director Youssef Chahine features a crazed turn by Patrice Chereau as Napoleon Bonaparte. The film, an Egyptian-French co-production, deals with Napoleon's occupation of Alexandria and its effect on a typical Egyptian family. Michel Piccoli leads the cast as a general in Napoleon's army who tentatively befriends a local poet and falls in love with two young Egyptian brothers, reflecting complex themes of colonial desire, affection, and personal connection.

Adieu Bonaparte

1985
An Egyptian Story
6.5

After we last see him in "Alexandria, Why?" Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad is in his thirties, and successful in his work, he has grown distant from his wife and children and suffers a symbolic blockage of the heart while shooting the final scenes of his latest film. After being flown to England for evaluation, it's determined that Yehia must undergo emergency surgery. Fact and fiction blend seamlessly—with healthy doses of cleverly absurdist fantasy—as the film explores the various personalities and forces that have made Yehia (and Youssef Chahine) the man he has become.

An Egyptian Story

1982
The Aquarium
6.8

Youssef is a hotshot anesthesiologist who often sleeps in his car for privacy. Laila is the careerist host of a late night radio call-in show. These two members of Cairo's elite, lost souls traveling parallel paths of longing and disconnection, are the principal fish in Yousry Nasrallah's The Aquarium, a meditation on the intellectual capital of the Middle East, now bent under the sway of repression in all its forms.

The Aquarium

2008
Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces
6.7

Yehia runs a catering business with his sons, Ref’at and Galal; the former is engaged to marry Karima, who actually loves his brother and is trying to find a way to reveal her feelings for him; while he himself is in love with Shadia who just returned from the UAE, but fear the differences between them.

Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces

2016
Back to Alexandria
6.1

After more than 20 years, Sue returns from Switzerland to her home country Egypt because her mother Fairouz is in a hospital bed. Sue ran away from the eccentric aristocrat as a young adult. Now she feels compelled to meet her again.

Back to Alexandria

2024
Mercedes
4.8

Nubi, a wealthy man with Communist ties, sets out to find his half-brother Gamal, who has been disowned for being gay, to let him inherit his father's fortune. In the process, Nubi is supposed to kill Gamal's stepmother Raifa, a suspected drug dealer, before she can kill his half-brother.

Mercedes

1993
The Gate of the Sun
6.5

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.

The Gate of the Sun

2004
Microphone
7.6

Upon his return to Alexandria, Khaled becomes intrigued with a graffiti mural opposite his apartment. As he pursues this further, a larger underground arts scene slowly reveals itself, composed of musicians, filmmakers, and graffiti artists. As they struggle to get their voices heard, Khaled is compelled to help them acquire some much deserved visibility.

Microphone

2010
The City
7.4

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery and takes part in a cheap play. Defying his father's wishes, he moves to Paris to fulfill his dreams and starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs. Ali has a life-changing experience there that he won't fully remember until he returns to Egypt.

The City

1999
Boys and Girls
9.0

A documentary which depicts the life of Bassem Samra and his friends and family. The film discusses issues concerning love and the veil.

Boys and Girls

1995
Summer Thefts
8.8

Set in the summer of 1961 during President Nasser's land reforms, this is a story of the childhood friendship between Yasser, the son of a bourgeois landowner, and Leil, the son of an Egyptian peasant. When turbulent times tear Yasser's family apart, the boys team up for a money-making scheme that results in misadventures.

Summer Thefts

1988
Into Studio Masr
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Into Studio Masr

2019
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In a small Egyptian town, Zeinab, a young girl, strongly believes in myths and superstitions. With the help of Noah, her Christian neighbor, she abducts her mother’s body. During the escape journey, both Zeinab and Noah are confronted with many of the myths and fears they so strongly believed were true.

The Legend of Zeineb and Noah

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In the mid-1990s, what did young Egyptians think of wearing the hijab? And of love? Where would their future lie, in their village or in Cairo? Yousry Nasrallah, one of the biggest names in Arab cinema, shows the diversity of their answers, from both male and female perspectives. The central figure is Bassem Samra, a 24-year-old teacher and aspiring actor in a film by Youssef Chahine. He holds lively conversations with friends, family and colleagues about their lives, with topics ranging from family pressure to get married to the complexities of dating in Arab society. The hijab turns out to mean something different to each of them—a means to be able to walk down the street undisturbed, an expression of faith. These relaxed, introspective discussions paint a varied picture of society that undermines many Western prejudices. What ultimately matters for these young people is to find their way in a world in which men and women receive mixed messages.

On Boys, Girls and the Veil