Red Sea International Film Festival

Romance, Musical and Melodrama   |    Running Time: 132 minutes

1972 / Arabic dialogue

Country: Egypt
Directed by: Hassan Al-Imam

Produced by
Sout El Fen

Starring
Hussein Fahmy, Suad Husni, Tahiyyah Karyuka, Shafik Galal, Samir Ghanem

Scriptwriter
Hassan El Emam, Salah Gaheen

By day, Zouzou is a serious theatre student at a prestigious Egyptian university, popular with her classmates. By night, she is a talented performer in her mother's belly-dancing troupe, a job seen as so shameful in 1970s Egypt that she knows her professors and fellow students would shun her if they knew about it. When a spiteful love rival reveals Zouzou's secret life, she refuses to be shamed in what becomes a larger story of the clash between tradition and modernity. Hassan al-Imam's classic film, now restored to its full glory, ran for a year in cinemas when released in 1972. The songs and dances that made it so winning, written by poet Salah Jaheen and composer Kamal Al Taweel, are now musical standards throughout the Arab world. However, it was the very modern figure of Zouzou (Soad Hosni, a.k.a the "Cinderella of Egyptian cinema")that was the main attraction.