The Nile and the Life
Egyptian film1968
The Nile and the Life (Arabic: النيل و الحياة, translit: El Nil w el Hayah) is a joint Egyptian/Soviet 1968 film starring Salah Zulfikar and directed by Youssef Chahine. It is written by Nikolai Ekk, Abd al-Rahman Sharqawi and Youssef Chahine.
Plot
The film painted a picture of Egyptian society, as well as Soviet workers upon embarking on the dangerous project of building the High Dam. The film presents a vision of a nation deeply rooted in unity, as well as diversity. The film also presents a vision of a renewed image of the Egyptian nation, and inadvertently acknowledges a new understanding of its political goals and objectives, and how this affects the person within it.
Production
In 1964, the Egyptian General Corporation for Cinema and Television had commissioned director Youssef Chahine to direct a huge colorful film glorifying the project of building the High Dam, but after the filming of the first film (The Nile and the Life) was finished in 1968, the General Film Organization rejected it, as opposed to the Russian side. The film was not shown in Egypt or abroad until the year 1999, when the film was later shown in France and was admired by the French audience and eventually shown in Egypt as well and earned critical recognition.
“The Nile and the Life” enters the record as egyptian film1968. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nile, Life and Egyptian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108549362. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1964 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Nile and the Life” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.