Friday, 18 January 2013: Cairo Station
Friday, 18 January 2013, 20:00
Venue: Forest Row Village Hall (see Locations and Tickets for further details)
Programme category: Forest Row Film Society
Director: Youssef Chahine, Egypt 1958, 120 mins, 15
“a pressure cooker of lust, jealousy, and psychosis” BBC Films
Youssef Chahine, Egypt’s famous director, plays the main character himself in this naturalistic attention-grabbing masterpiece of drama and suspense at Cairo Station. Vibrantly he embodies Qinawi, the lame and simple-minded newspaper boy whose frustrated desire for a flirty lemonade girl is fanned into tragedy.
“an unmissable film” Guardian
Further Reading
- The Guardian
- BBC Film
- Time Out
- Empire
- Youssef Chahine
- Licensed from: Arab Film Distribution
[…] Take a look at Forest Row Film Society’s page about the film […]
[…] Cairo Station […]
Audience score of 76.1, which is low for us, and suggests a divided audience, much like we found with John Cassavetes last season. It’s certainly a rather sorrowful, frustrated view of the culture in which it was created, and I’m sure the gritty neo-realism wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Nevertheless, it is a remarkable bit of film-making, encompassing a vast amount of Egyptian society and politics in its short running time. On a second viewing I still think it terrific.
Some good audience comments too:
“Cairo Station at the Film Society night very engaging. Youssef Chahine’s view of the underdog’s life at a big railway station in pre-Shari’a law Egypt, with Chahine himself playing the limping hero-cum-villain. And the village blanketed in white when we came out. Gorgeous.”
“Absolutely fabulous what a masterpiece”