Doaa al-Karawan

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Doaa al-Karawan DVD cover

Doaa al-Karawan (Arabic: دعاء الكروان, The Nightingale's Prayer) is a classical 1959 Egyptian drama movie directed by Henry Barakat and based on the novel by the prominent writer Taha Hussein. It stars Faten Hamama and Ahmed Mazhar. The movie was selected as one of the best 150 Egyptian movies in the Egyptian Cinema centennial celebration in 1996. It also received other awards and almost made it to the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Movie.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Amna is a young woman that witnesses the death of her older sister by her uncle, who had abandoned her family and left them with no support. She understands from her mother that her sister deserves to die because she dishonors the family. Amna doesn't agree. She believes that her uncle should be blamed for their conditions. She seeks revenge from the engineer who swayed her sister and lied to her thus causing her death. Amna moves to his house to work as a maid and tries to poison him several times, but all her plans fail. She discovers it's impossible to kill him. This engineer starts to hit on her, but she resists him, which makes him even more attracted to her.

The poor girl thought that by not resisting him anymore and pretending to love him, she would be able to destroy his life. What she didn't expect was that she herself would fall in love him. She plans to dig a hole and trick him into falling in it. She tries to but fails and both fall in the hole. She faces him with the truth, and reveals who she is. She decides to leave him as she knows that her plan fails. Her uncle finds out what she had done and decides to kill her because she has ruined the family's reputation. As she steps out of the engineer's house, she sees her uncle and knows that he has a bad intention, but the engineer sees him too, and takes the bullet in his back to protect her and save her life.