Alexandria, why? = Iskindiria, leh? [DVD]

Episode number 1 of Series “Alexandria Trilogy”.
Set against the panoramic backdrop of war-torn Egypt, director Youssef Chahine tells a highly personal tale of love and determination. Yehia is an eighteen-year-old boy living with extended family in Alexandria. His parents, in particular his father, have made great personal sacrifices in order to send their son to expensive schools, in order that he may become an engineer. But Yehia fosters desires and ambitions to be an actor in Hollywood. Despite Yehia’s evident commitment, his father dismisses his son’s art as a serious prospect. However as Hitler’s troops advance toward Egypt, the life that Yehia and his family are accustomed to starts to crumble. Thousands flee, becoming refugees, and as prices inflate ordinary people struggle to cope with wartime rationing. Meanwhile - a group of men, disgruntled by English occupation dispatch various plots, in the hope of assassinating Churchill; a beautiful Jewess falls in love with one would-be-assassin, but her wealthy father wishes them to flee the Nazi threat; a young gay English soldier, terrified of his imminent dispatch to the Front, has an affair with a charming aristocrat. Chahine cleverly intersperses newsreel footage with the lives of his protagonists as they struggle to determine their prospects, whilst also interrogating notions of patriotism and duty versus desire and personal ambition. This autobiographical film was followed by two sequels, “Alexandria again and forever” and “An Egyptian story”.