Al Haram

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Al Haram الحرام
Faten Hamama in Al Haram
Directed by	Henry Barakat
Written by	Youssef Idriss Saad al-Din Wahbah
Starring	Faten Hamama Zaki Rostom Abdallah Gheith
Release date(s)	1965
Running time	105 minutes
Country	Egypt
Language	Arabic
IMDb profile

Al Haram listen (help·info) (Arabic: الحرام‎, English: The Sin) is a classical 1965 Egyptian drama film directed by Henry Barakat. The film stars Faten Hamama, Zaki Rostom, and Abdallah Gheith and is based on a novel by the same title by Yūsuf Idrīs. The film was nominated for the Prix International award in the Cannes International Film Festival. It was also chosen as one of the best Egyptian film productions in the Egyptian Cinema centennial. A survey by Al-Fonoon magazine in 1984 chose it as one of the best ten films in the history of Egyptian cinema.

[edit] Plot

Azizah, a poor peasant, portrays worker oppression in this somber social drama. She gets savagely raped by a guard when she goes into the fields to gather potatoes. She does not reveal what had happened to her husband who is suffering from an illness. She conceals the pregnancy and throttles the baby after it is born. She also dies soon thereafter. The migrant workers rally around her memory as she becomes a martyr to the cause of the struggling peasants.

The newspaper Le Monde wrote: "we have attracted to this movie due to the true picture that reflects the suffering of this village, the picture is not about a problem for one individual, it’s about the reflection of everything surrounding her, from people to culture."