The Night of Counting the Years Al-Mummia |
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A screenshot from the film. |
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Directed by | Shadi Abdel Salam |
Produced by | Roberto Rossellini |
Written by | Shadi Abdel Salam |
Starring | Ahmed Marei Ahmad Hegazi Zouzou Hamdy El-Hakim Nadia Lutfi |
Music by | Mario Nascimbene |
Cinematography | Abdel Aziz Fahmy |
Editing by | Kamal Abou-El-Ella |
Distributed by | General Egyptian Cinema Organisation Merchant Ivory Productions |
Release date(s) | 1969 |
Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | Egypt |
Language | Classical Arabic |
The Night of Counting the Years, a.k.a. The Mummy (Arabic: Al-Mummia المومياء) is a 1969 Egyptian film directed by Shadi Abdel Salam. It was Salam's first feature film.[1] Egyptian critics consistently list it as one of the most important Egyptian films ever made.[2] The film was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 43rd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.[3]
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Set in 1881, on the eve of British colonial rule, it is based on the true story of the Abd el-Rasuls, an Upper-Egyptian clan that had been robbing a cache of mummies discovered at tomb DB320 near the village of Kurna, and selling the artefacts on the illicit antiquities black market. After a conflict within the clan, one of its members goes to the police, helping the Antiquities Service find the cache.
The film casts its story in terms of the search for an authentic, lost Egyptian national identity, represented by the neglected and misunderstood artifacts of ancient Egyptian civilisation. However, the conflict between city and countryside suggests questions that are not resolved in the film, making it an ambiguous, unsettling reflection on the price of identity.
Its slow pace, unusual camera angles and striking colours give the film a dreamlike quality, reinforced by Mario Nascimbene's eerie music. Moreover, the dialogue is entirely in classical Arabic, a very unusual trait for an Egyptian film, which adds to the sense of unreality.