The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Chahine was one of the great auteurs, and this movie is just sublime.”

Luca Guadagnino

The culmination of Youssef Chahine’s first decade of filmmaking, Cairo Station is the director writ large, a symphony of explosive emotion, song, and iconic imagery that would reverberate throughout the rest of his career. It’s also an anomaly, distilling his trademark genre expansiveness into a 75-minute rush of sweat, tears, and encroaching shadow. Different kinds of action and violence converge at the train station of the title. Hanuma (Hind Rostom) is an unlicensed seller of ice-cold drinks across (and under) the station’s scorching hot platforms. She is associated with two men. Abu Serih (Farid Shawki), a labourer and union organizer, is semi-committed to a future with Hanuma; Kenawi (Chahine), a newspaper vendor outcast from society by his disabling limp, is absorbed in a one-sided obsession with her. Around this trio, Chahine adds a silent romance and news of a serial killer, as the film expertly shifts between neorealism and classic artificiality.

In Arabic with English subtitles

“Free from [all] limiting traditions … Cairo Station will continue to be astounding a century from now.” Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Cine-File

“Captivating … The movie is an exceedingly strange blend of neorealist social protest, sentimental comedy, and horror—a little as if City Lights suddenly turned into a slasher film.” Dave Kehr, Film Comment

preceded by

Cairo as Seen by Chahine
(القاهرة منورة بأهلها)
Egypt/​France 1991
Youssef Chahine
24 min. DCP In Arabic with English subtitles

In his only documentary, Youssef Chahine dares his audience (as well as himself) to confess that our concepts of Egypt are irreparably conditioned by stereotypes. He proposes, with characteristic buoyancy (spliced with matter-of-fact honesty), images that might go in place of the pyramids and the markets. As a suggestive nod to its mode of inquiry, the film was paired for its French premiere in 1995 with Jean-Luc Godard’s hour-long Self Portrait in December at Godard’s request.

“Chahine [is] a master of the game and [this] is his stylistic statement: the sexual radiance of images and words, with no room for satiety.”

Laurence Giavarini, Cahiers du cinéma

“Documentary and fiction are the same thing, you can see that very clearly in Chahine’s film.”

Jean-Luc Godard