The Yacoubian Building (film)

The Yacoubian Building (Arabic: عمارة يعقوبيان, transliterated: ʿImārat Yaʿqūbīān or Omaret Yakobean) is a 2006 Egyptian film based on the novel of the same title by author Alaa Al Aswany. It has been reported to be the highest-budgeted film in the history of Egyptian cinema.

Like the novel ostensibly set in 1990 at about the time of the first Gulf War, the film is a scathing portrayal of modern Egyptian society since the coup d'état of 1952. The setting is downtown Cairo, with the titular apartment building (which actually exists) serving as both a metaphor for contemporary Egypt and a unifying location in which most of the primary characters either live or work and in which much of the action takes place.

The actual namesake Yacoubian building, constructed in the Art Deco style, still stands in downtown Cairo at the address given in the novel: 34 Talaat Harb Street (referred to by its old name, Suleiman Basha Street, by both native Cairenes and the novel's characters). As in the novel, the film's version of the building is "in the high classical European style, the balconies decorated with Greek faces carved in stone."

After premiering at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006, the film opened in Egypt in June.

The Yacoubian Building was Egypt's official submission to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

Plot

The Yacoubian Building is rented out to tenants of varying social backgrounds; poorer residents live upstairs and on the rooftop, while more affluent ones live downstairs. Among those in the rooftop are Taha, an aspiring police officer, Busayna, his girlfriend, and Malak, an unscrupulous slumlord. Downstairs, Zaki Pasha, the elderly son of a noble and Haj Azzam, a drug dealer posing as a respectable businessman, rent units at the Yacoubian but do not reside there, while Hatim, a closeted gay writer and newspaper editor, lives alone in his unit.