Film director Youssef Chahine, 82, dies in Cairo

YOUSSEF Chahine, one of Egypt’s most lauded movie directors whose films over nearly five decades often went on Fellini-esque flights of fancy and tackled social ills and Islamic fundamentalism, died yesterday in Cairo. He was 82 years old.

His death comes about four weeks after he fell into a coma following a brain haemorrhage. Chahine was flown to France in critical condition for treatment but later sent back to Al Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo, according to Egypt’s official new agency, MENA.

Chahine’s eclectic work made him one of the few Egyptian directors to gain an audience abroad, particularly in Europe and France, where he won a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997.

At home, his films raised controversy for their frank portrayal of sexuality, their sharp criticism of political oppression and, in his later works, their denunciations of rising Islamic extremism in Egypt.

In 1994, a fundamentalist lawyer succeeded in getting a court to ban his film The Emigrant because its plot was based on the story of Joseph, found in the Bible and Quran. Most interpretations of Islam ban the depiction of prophets.

Chahine was born on January 25, 1926, to a Christian family of Lebanese origin in Alexandria.

Throughout his more than 40 films and documentaries, he sought to recapture and defend the spirit of multicultural tolerance against the forces he saw undermining it — fundamentalism, dictatorship and imperialism.

Chahine grew up speaking French and English better than Arabic, and many of his films were French co-productions, bringing criticism by some at home that he was not Arab — or Egyptian — enough. But his early films became classics of social realism, giving gritty depictions of the lowest in Egyptian society.

His later films tackled Islamic conservativism. After the banning of The Emigrant, Chahine responded with the historical film Destiny, about the 12th Century Muslim philosopher Averroes,

His last movie, This is Chaos (2007) was a sharp criticism of the Egyptian government’s crackdown on democracy activists.