Tharthara Fawq Al Neel

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Tharthara Fawq Al Neel (Arabic: ثرثرة فوق النيل) (Chitchat on the Nile) is a novel by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz that was made into a popular film.

[edit] Plot

Al-hashish is forbidden while alcohol isn't? Why? Both are bad for the health? Both are intoxicating? This is one of the famous phrases of the movie based on the novel.

Is considered the most famous Egyptian movie of all time. It mainly talks about the decadence of Egyptian society during the Gamal Abdel Nasser era.

It talks about a simple Egyptian worker (palyed by Imad Hamdy) who can't tolerate the hypocrisy of the Egyptian government and the illiteracy of the Egyptian public and decides to hide from all the problems in the country Egypt by simply taking the Shisha which is a popular smoking habit in Egypt and usually added drugs in it to escape from reality and problems.

Imad Hamdy (who used to work as a teacher) meets with an old student (actor Ahmed Ramzy) by chance. Ramzi invites him to the small boat in the nile. And Imad discovers soon enough that he isn't the only person who smokes Shisha but a bunch of other Elite (high class), middle class and low class people are all on this boat on the Nile River.

He soon discovers that everyone is smoking to forget the reality and hypocrisy of Egyptian life.

At the end of the movie, Imad Hamdy decideds to stop smoking the Shisha and so stop taking drugs. But soon left alone in the street as a crazy person because he was screaming to everyone (don't smoke Hashish) and everyone considered him crazy. In other sense he was considered trying to take the Egyptians out of being smoked.

The film was released at the era of Anwar Al Sadat the former President of Egypt winner of Nobel Peace Prize and was soon taken out quickly from the market because the film was seen as a criticism of the Gamal Abdel Nasser President socialism period and oppression of all the artistic films at the Nasser's time where it was forbidden to do any film at his time unless if it's clearly stated that the rich people society (Elite) are assholes while the poor people are the only good people. But yet Anwar al-Sadat didn't want to upset the egyptian people who still few of them loved and respected Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The film is is now distributed by Founoon Distribution and it's one of the film that touched the Arab and western world at the same time. The film is also subtitled with French and English which is not a common thing in the Egyptian DVDs market.

And even though that the film might seem as a drug problem but it's actually a political controversial movie. Where everyone is trying to forget the hypocrisy of the Egyptian society by simply taking Hashish or any other drug to forget the harsh reality of Egypt.

The film was produced in 1971 and lost a lot of money due to the excessive banning that happened not only in the middle east but also in the western countries (mainly Europe) and is only respected 35 years later. And even though the world now is more open than 35 years ago but it's still forbidden in many countries both Arabic and western especially oppressed countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The strange thing that it's the most film that everyone has done a perfect job. Beginning from the writer Naguib Mahfouz, to the director Hussein Kamal, to the actors and actress and even script writers and all people contributed to the job. You can feel that it's a film done from the heart where everyone is affected from the hypocrisy of Egypt and the bad influence that Nasser left behind.

Tharthara Fawq Al Neel at the Internet Movie Database