Faten Hamama
Acting
Biography
Faten Hamama (May 27, 1931 - January 17, 2015) was an Egyptian actress and producer. Dubbed "The Lady of the Arabic Screen", she was born in El Mansoura, Egypt. Her legendary journey started as a secret statement between a six-year-old girl and her father after they watched a film in their neighborhood theater, at which leading actress and producer Asya Dagher was present. Faten told her father that she felt the audience was applauding her as the leading actress, and her father hugged her with a vision of helping his daughter become a movie star. She won a contest for the most beautiful child in Egypt, and her dad sent her picture to director Muhammad Karim (a pioneer of Egyptian cinema). Karim was looking for a child for his new film with Egyptian musician Mohamed Abdel Wahab. Faten auditioned for and got a role in this movie, Yom said (1940) ("A Happy Day"). She impressed the filmmakers so much during shooting that she was actually given more lines and scenes in the picture than were scripted initially for her. Karim put her under contract, and four years later he gave her a role in a film with Mohamed Abdel Wahab again, Russassa fil Kalb (1944) ("A Bullet in the Heart"). With her third movie with Karim, Dunia (1946), Faten showed filmmakers and audiences alike that she was an actress ready for bigger roles. Her father, along with her family, moved to Cairo to help her in her career. She also began studying her craft at the High Institute of Acting in 1946. Faten left Egypt from 1966-1971 because she resisted the political pressure that was applied to her. She divided her time between Lebanon and London, England. During this period Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser asked some prominent critics and writers to try to persuade her to return to Egypt, saying that "Faten Hamama is a national treasure". Her return to Egypt in 1971 breathed life back into Egyptian cinema. She insisted that her films reflect the values of society through family relationships. Her first film upon return was Witch (a short film) with Salah Zulfikar. Her role in Emberatoriet Meem (1972) ("Empire M") as a widow with six children and the struggles she endured to raise them made the film a success both critically and financially, and she earned a special award from an organization in the Soviet Union when the film was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival. Her film Orid Hallan (1975) ("I Need a Solution") which was produced by Salah Zulfikar was not only a big hit but resulted in changes to Egyptian marriage and divorce laws. Faten Hamama is the fourth Pyramid in Egyptian cinema, a legend in her platinum anniversary, the diamond that remained shining and kept glowing over the decades on the silver screen.
Known For
No description available.
Cinépanorama
Hekmat, the principal of a school for girls, tries to put her educational theory into effect across all the schools in Alexandria, but she faces a lot of obstacles, both within and without the school, in addition to her personal problems that she struggles to solve.
Conscience of Teacher Hekmat
A wealthy landlord floods and destroys a village on purpose to prevent the people living there from making a profit off their crops. What he doesn't know is that his own daughter, Amal, is in love with Ahmed, a young man from the village.
The Blazing Sun
Spoiled rich girl Nadia gets jealous after finding out her father's plan to remarry. She tries to break them apart, spreading lies about her new mother-in-law and getting involved with a man twice her age.
Sleepless
Mona meets Magdy and Fouad in Alexandria and falls in love with Fouad who loves her back, but Magdy asks her to marry him and her mother agrees because of his wealth. After Mona marries Magdy, she finds out that he's impotent, which causes a series of problems.
The Virgin Wife
Ragab, a poor sailor, returns home to Alexandria after three years of absence, during which he tried to save money to marry his one true love, Hamedah. But there's trouble on the harbor, and with an old friend.
Struggle in the Harbor
This compelling tale of love and betrayal, set in the upper Egyptian countryside, follows the story of Amna as she plots her revenge on the engineer who destroyed her family's honor.
The Nightingale's Prayer
Aziza and her husband Abdullah are both day laborers who work on various farms. When Aziza is brutally raped by a guard while she is picking potatoes in a field, she tries to hide the pregnancy and plans to kill the baby once it is born.
The Sin
A chance meeting at an auction brings together Sawsan, a working-class girl and Adel, heir to a vast fortune with several estates to his name. This leads to a whirlwind marriage. This development spells trouble for Adel's fair-weather bourgeois clique, who are used to manipulating him with their own financial interests at heart.
Sayedat el kasr
Sherif visits a psychiatrist for his illness who exploits him to commit a murder by hypnotism.
House No. 13
Delusions dominate Souad's mind and she believes that she can be with the person she loves through magic, so she puts a piece of sugar for her boyfriend that she brought from one of the charlatans in his cup of tea
Witch
The family of Abu Taqiyya holds the hostility to the pasha who obtained their land from a public auction. This pasha has a daughter who falls in love with an agricultural engineer, and one of her relatives is trying to marry her in the greed of her father's money.
I'll Never Cry
The film takes place in Palestine and portrays the lives of freedom fighters trying to free their village from the control of the Israelis. Ahmed (Omar Sharif) is an Egyptian freedom fighter who ends up in this village. There, he meets Salma, a girl from the village. Together they try to save the Palestinians and always escape danger.
Land of Peace
A poor girl lives on the rooftop of a building. Three young neighbors fall in love with her. The decide to help her when they discover that she is seriously ill and in need of an urgent operation.
Our Best Days
Aisha is a widow with five children, Sana, Suad, Lamia, Asmaa and Noor. The eldest got married to Orabi the carpenter, and are living in the family's poor house. Orabi starts acting like he's the man of the house, and the other sisters try to find their way in life.
Bitter Day, Sweet Day
Muhammad Kamal, a simple young man on the tram, meets a girl he loves and shares his feelings with her, but her father objects to this relationship because of the poverty of this singer.
Happy Day
Ahmed leaves the town after his boss refuses to marry his daughter to him, but his father's passing forces him to go back and deal with unexpected issues.
Land of Dreams
An aristocratic family is torn down after the death of its patriarch. He leaves alone his widow wife and five of his daughters and sons. His eldest son, Ahmed (Shukry Sarhan), takes the role of the man in the house and helps his mother take care of his brother and sisters. Mamdouh (Ahmed Ramzy), his brother, is a self-centered man who refuses to follow his brother’s step and decides to make his own decisions in his life.
The Sun Will Never Set
A poor girl (Mona) who works as a simple employee at a bank and provides her family. Under the pressure of need and illness of her father and the pressure of her mother, which insists on her to increase her income, she gets a wealthy old businessman to love her. An engineer (Adel), who works in the company of her lover (Abdo) reveals his love, she convinces him to resign and build his own independent company and give him jewelry as a capital and stand by him and encourage him and cut ties with Abdo. Will their love story continue?
The Thin Thread
Hamza "a member of the volunteer National Guard" meets up with the teacher Fawzya "Faten", after the fire of Cairo broke out, the British trying to capture all the volunteers in the National Guard , Hamza hiding in the house of one of his friend, and Fawzya help him, and she is trying to formation its own cell in order to hit the English forces in the Canal zone.