students caught up in events. An Odyssey (2001–2004), inspired by Abdelaziz Belkhodja’s novel The Ashes of Carthage and considered Tunisia’s first film in the thriller genre, offers a critical perspective on transnational trafficking in art and cultural objects.
BAB’AZIZ (THE PRINCE WHO CONTEMPLATED HIS SOUL) (2005)
See DESERT TRILOGY.
BACCAR, SELMA (1945–)
Born in Tunis, Baccar studied cinematography in Paris and became the first Tunisian woman to direct a narrative feature film in that country: Fatma 75 (1976) explores contradictions between traditional and modern aspects of Tunisian society and culture, highlighting celebrated women and other eminent figures of the Berber independence movement. Her second directorial feature, Dance of Fire (1994), dedicated to the memory of a Jewish Tunisian singer of the 1920s, continues Baccar’s interest in the representation of Tunisian women. It introduces the singer at the peak of her popularity and recounts her activities during that period, from her celebrated salon in Tunis through her travels to Europe to her return and untimely death—a crime of passion—in 1927. Her third feature, Flower of Forgetfulness, was released in 2005. Baccar has also made documentaries and is the first female producer in Tunisia. In 1979, she coauthored a manifesto in support of Arab women filmmakers with Egyptian film historian Magda Wassef and Lebanese director Heiny Srour (Leila and the Wolves).
BACHIR-CHOUIKH, YAMINA (1954–)
Algerian Yamina Bachir-Chouikh worked at the Office National pour le Commerce et l’Industrie Cinématographiques, serving as a scriptwriter for Omar Gatlato (Merzak Allouache, 1976) and Sand Wind (Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, 1982). She has worked as an editor and screenwriter on several additional Algerian films, including The Citadel (1988) and The Ark of the Desert (1997), both directed by her husband, Mohamed Chouikh. Her first directorial feature, Rachida (2002), concerns a young teacher shot by terrorists when she refuses to place a bomb in her school. Miraculously, she survives but, unsafe in Algiers, moves with her mother to a house in the countryside, where she attempts to build a new life, again as a teacher, only to experience Islamist violence there too. Despite this, she refuses to bow to, or reciprocate, the violence, and the film ends as, the day after a murderous attack on the village, she reenters her wrecked schoolroom, accompanied by some of her pupils. Rachida was made during a period in which Algerian filmmaking had almost ceased in the face of the civil conflict; its psychological insight and portrayal of female solidarity and oppression make it one of the most significant Algerian films of the century to date. It is also the first 35-mm feature film directed by a woman ever to have been shot in Algeria. In 2010, Bachir-Choukih directed a documentary, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, about the role of women in the national liberation movement, and she edited her daughter Yasmine Chouikh’s first film, Until the End of Time (2017), a romantic drama that won the Best First Feature award at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou in 2019.
BADIE, MUSTAPHA (1928–2001)
A filmmaker and actor originally named Arezki Berkouk, Mustapha Badie worked in the Arab municipal theater group of Algiers and received training at the Radiodiffusion Télévision Française during the colonial era, then found work at Emissions en Langues Arabe et Kabyle with Radio-Alger. His activities in support of Algerian liberation led to his arrest and imprisonment from 1957 until independence. Upon his release, he resumed his career under the name Mustapha Badie. His films, usually based on historical events, include Our Mothers (1963) and The Night Is Afraid of the Sun (1966), an epic feature in the tradition of Chronicle of the Years of Embers (Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, 1975), depicting various aspects of Algerian society and culture between 1952 and 1962 in four tableaux (The Land Is Thirsty, The Roads to Prison, History of Saliha, and History of Fatma).
BADRAKHAN, AHMED (1909–1969)
At a time when Egypt had no film industry to speak of, Badrakhan wrote articles about cinema for the periodicals Al-Sabah and Magalaty, before moving to France in 1931 to study film under the patronage of Talaat Harb. He returned in 1934 to become the first Egyptian director of Harb’s Studio Misr. He was in many respects a director of “firsts”: he wrote the screenplay for the first film produced by Studio Misr, entitled Wedad (1936)—likewise the first film to star Umm Kulthum. (Badrakhan also partially directed this film, but following a dispute, Fritz Kramp took over.) Quickly, however, he became known as the director of Umm Kulthum’s films, all musicals: Song of Hope (1937), Dinars (1940), Aïda (1942), and Fatma (1947). He was also the first to film singers Farid al-Atrache and Asmahan (in Triumph of Youth [1940]) and actress Mariam Fakhr Eddin (Night of Love [1951]). He also directed two important biopics: Mustafa Kamel (1952) and Sayed Darwish (1966). Mustafa Kamel, which tells the life story of the young nationalist who led the 1919 revolt, is credited as the first film to depict the national struggle for independence against the British and was denied screening until after the Free Officers coup of 1952. With Sayed Darwish, Badrakhan sets the story of the eponymous composer against the backdrop of anti-British demonstrations, in which the young Darwish actively participates, rebelling against his religious schooling in pursuit of his talent, and falling in love with a dancer (Hind Rustom).
Badrakhan’s With God on Our Side (completed in 1953 but released in 1955 due to problems with the censors) depicts the events leading up to the Free Officers coup and was filmed shortly following that event. It tells the story of a young officer, Ahmed (Emad Hamdi), who loses an arm because of defective weapons used by Egypt in the 1948 war in Palestine. The film condemns those who were responsible and who collaborated with the British and the ruling monarchy, including Ahmed’s own uncle, Abdel Aziz Pasha (Mahmoud El-Miligi). Both Badrakhan’s historical/nationalistic films and his romantic-musical melodramas were filled with sentiment, the protagonists often sacrificing for a greater good or for the sake of their loved ones. His son, Ali Badrakhan, has also become an important director in Egypt.
BADRAKHAN, ALI (1946–)
Son of Ahmed Badrakhan, Ali Badrakhan began his career as an assistant director with his father and, later, to Fatin Abdel-Wahab, Youssef Chahine, and Ahmad Diauddin. Devoid of his father’s romanticism, his own films were deeply political, often scathing in their criticism of figures of power and corruption. With Karnak (1975), Badrakhan levels his criticism against Nasserism, while in Shafika and Metwally (1978), he depicts the construction of the Suez Canal and those who betrayed Egypt during the colonial era. In People on the Top (1981), based on a story by Naguib Mahfouz, Nur El-Sherif plays a petty thief who is released from jail to become a rich businessman. The film portrays the new social class that emerged as a result of Anwar Sadat’s opening of the country to Western capitalist policies (the Infitah). Personal greed and corruption at the expense of the greater good are likewise emphasized in Hunger (1986), set in the unspecified 19th-century past but clearly commenting on present-day social ills. Based on the novel The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz, the film tells the story of a donkey cart transporter, Farag El-Gibali (Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz), who stands up to local bullies and is consequently granted fetewwa status (power and authority to protect and manage local affairs). As he is seduced into a hedonistic relationship with a rich woman, Malak (Yousra), however, he abandons his family and grows increasingly selfish, becoming so negligent of the people’s needs and interests that they resort to looting his stash
