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“A sprawling, star-studded epic that spans all social classes in today's Cairo”
Deborah Young
Original Title
Omaret Yakobean
Synopsis
A vibrant social critique, the film, through interwoven stories of the residents of a building in central Cairo, paints a portrait of corruption, fundamentalism, prostitution, homosexuality, and drug abuse in contemporary Egypt. The film takes us inside the streets, bars, shops and apartments of downtown Cairo, to reveal different segments of society, several storylines, and multiple personalities with one common denominator: that they all live in the Yacoubian Building.
The film starts with the son of an ex-Pacha, Zaki El Dessouki (Adel Imam), who preserves the elegance and arrogance related to aristocratic families. In his youth he was a playboy and though he has grown older, women continue to be his biggest weakness; he mixes with a unique breed of women, who live in cheap bars downtown.
His servant takes advantage of Zaki’s weakness for women and puts Bothayna (Hend Sabry) in his path. Bothayna, a poor girl who is the sole bread winner for her family after her father''s death, is obliged to sacrifice her honour while preserving her virginity in a relationship with the owner of the shop where she works. She even sacrifices her childhood love, Taha El Shazly (Mohamed Imam), the son of the building’s porter, who due to his social position fails to join the police academy – his lifelong dream – and ends up running away from his life to join a religious group, which leads him into a new maze.
Zaki falls in love with Bothayna. He finds in her security and the tenderness that he had been longing for, contrary to his relationship with his sister Dawlat (Isaad Younis), where the gap between them widens to the extent that she throws him out of his apartment and forces him to live in his office. She makes a deal with Zaki’s servant to catch him red-handed with Bothayna…
Another character is Haj Azzam (Nour El Sherif) who used to be a shoe smith and now illegally owns half of the downtown shops and a lot of foreign commercial agencies, which make him richer by the day. He marries a young woman in secret after he sees his wife getting older. He requires his new wife Soad to not have any children and locks her in an apartment in the Yacoubian Building. But Soad decides to ignore Haj Azzam’s orders and have a child… Haj Azzam dedicates his time to the People''s Assembly elections, and the person who helps him win is Kamal El Fouly (Khaled Saleh), a key person in the government and a mysterious one as well; in exchange for helping Haj Azzam, he imposes on him a partnership in one of his big agencies.
There is also the journalist Hatem (Khaled El Sawy), one of the residents of the building and the son of an aristocratic family. His father was a famous man of law and his mother was French. Away from work, he falls in love with a soldier seduces him, knowing his desperation for money, to engage in a sexual relationship with him. He rents one of the rooms on the roof in the Yacoubian Building for him. But it all ends in a tragedy…
Premiering at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, The Yacoubian Building was Egypt''s official submission to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Often controversial and shocking in parts, this adaptation of a popular novel has drawn accolades across the globe.
