DIFF's The 100 Greatest Arab Films

In 1881, when precious artifacts began showing up at market, members of the Horbat tribe were revealed to be raiding the site of a cache of mummies.

A newspaper salesman at the train station in Cairo develops an unhealthy obsession with a woman who sells refreshments.

A meticulous chronicle of the evolution of the Algerian national movement from 1939 until the outbreak of the revolution on November 1, 1954, the film unequivocally demonstrates that the "Algerian War" is not an accident of history, but a slow process of suffering and warlike revolts, uninterrupted, from the start of colonization in 1830, until ...

Set in 1933, the mayor informs the peasants that the share of irrigation of their land will be split equally between them and feudal lord Mahmoud Bey. The peasants send Mohamed Effendi to submit a petition to the government. Mahmoud Bey then proposes a project that would require taking part of the peasants' lands.

The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.

Dib moves with his younger brother and their mother from his home town of Quneitra to Damascus after the death of his father. The children’s grandfather, who was known for his tyranny, reluctantly agrees to shelter the grieving family, and tries to force his daughter to marry again. The magic of the city of Damascus takes over the conscience. Di...

Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning...

Sheikh Hosny is a blind man who lives with his old mother and his frustrated son in the Kit Kat neighborhood. His son Youssef dreams of going to Europe to find work, and has a relationship with a divorced woman named Fatima. Sheikh Hosny refuses to admit his handicap and dreams of riding a motorcycle like every sighted person, he also spends his...

In 1975, the long slog of civil war has recently begun in Beirut. Two friends, Tarek and Omar, suffer during the Lebanese civil war. Conflicts arise when they decide to cross from West to East, crossing the Muslim-Christian line that divides Beirut.

The film follows three Palestinian refugees brought together by dispossession and hope for a better future. Hiding in the tank of a truck, the men attempt to make their way across the border into Kuwait, the "promised land."

Paradise Now is filmed from the perspective of two Palestinian men who are predestined to perform a suicide attack in Israel. This is the first film to deal with the subject of suicide attackers.

Noura struggles to reconcile two worlds, Muslim women and men, while also dealing with his own sexuality.

In the ensuing days before his wedding bridegroom Hachemi faces both the anxieties of the future and the shadows of the past. His best friend, Farfat, is the topic of street graffiti and local gossip, which calls his manhood into question. This ripples out to affect Hachemi for, unbeknownst to anyone, as apprenticed youths they were molested by ...

Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are street kids. The daily dose of glue sniffing represents their only escape from reality. Since they left Dib and his gang, they have been living on the portside of Casablanca. They live in constant fear of Dib's revenge. Ali wants to become a sailor - when he was living with his mother, a prostitute, he used to li...

Amid the poverty, death, and suffering caused by World War II, 18-year-old Yehia retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of studying filmmaking in America but struggles to pursue his dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.

In sixth-century Mecca, Prophet Muhammad receives his first revelation from God as a messenger. Three years later, he's not alone in his quest and publicly declares his prophecy. Muhammad is fought by Abu Sufian and his wife Hind, rulers of Mecca. Muhammad's followers are hunted and tortured but he continues his calling.

A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor's condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and A...

Set in a mythical small Upper-Egyptian village where people live off planting dates and making of Date Wine, a stranger arrives and calls on people to travel to the abroad for job opportunities, all of the village's grown-up men leave, except for the disabled grandfather and his grandson Ahmed, upon which trouble begins to spread in the village ...

The first feature film to be made by the state of Kuwait. It is a period piece about Kuwait before the discovery of oil when fishing was the predominant occupation. Bas Ya Bahar is the story of a crippled pearl diver who forbids his son Mussaid to go to sea to dive for pearls.

This compelling tale of love and betrayal, set in the upper Egyptian countryside, follows the story of Amna as she plots her revenge on the engineer who destroyed her family's honor.

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "I...

In 1933 in the village of Karnak in Luxor, sad lives with her husband Bakhit Bishari paraplegic and TB disease.

Set in the suburbs of Cairo in the late 1930s, the story follows a middle-class Egyptian family grappling with the hardships of life after the death of their father, their sole breadwinner. The mother and her four children—three brothers and their sister, Nefisah—struggle to avoid slipping into poverty. They all go in different directions which ...

This movie tells the story of Omar Mukhtar, an Arab Muslim rebel who fought against the Italian conquest of Libya during the second Italo-Senussi War. It gives western viewers a glimpse into this little-known region and chapter of history, and exposes the savage means by which the conquering army attempted to subdue the natives.

In his debut feature film, director Muhammad explores the inexorable dissolution of a family, ironically during the planning of a wedding, the kind of ritual that ought to bond family members together in shared joy. The film exposes the divisive dynamics of patriarchal oppression, and the terrible connections between familial and sociopolitical ...

In the destroyed city of Quneitra is the grave of a resistance fighter for Palestine. His son, the director, tries to restore the dead man's history by mixing echoes of his mother's memory and his desire to give his father a more honorable death. Through the daily lives, dreams, fears, and hopes of its citizens, Malas chronicles his hometown Qun...

When Mona marries the seemingly decent police officer Hisham, she finds out there is more into him than what he shows to the people.

The transformations of the daily life of the Algerian people during the destructive French occupation, then during the war of liberation. While military repression is in full swing, a peasant woman finds herself alone in her mountain home when her only son is kidnapped by French soldiers shortly after her husband's death during a raid. One day, ...

Omar, a young man, lives a simple life with his family and suffers from loneliness. His life changes when he tries to bond with a girl he barely knows.

Set shortly before and during the Six Day War in June of 1967, The Sparrow follows a young police officer stationed in a small village in Upper Egypt whose inhabitants suffer from the harassment of a corrupt businessman.

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

The lives of residents in an old Cairo building, "The Yacoubian Building," are affected by issues like corruption, extremism, class disparity, and sexuality. Through diverse characters, the film offers a critical examination of Egyptian society.

A father loses his carpentry workshop after his son-in-law stops paying taxes regularly. His son Hassan, a bus driver, struggles hard to save his father’s workshop, while the daughters try to replace it with a new project inspired by the “Infitah” era.

Aziza and her husband Abdullah are both day laborers who work on various farms. When Aziza is brutally raped by a guard while she is picking potatoes in a field, she tries to hide the pregnancy and plans to kill the baby once it is born.

The story of the friendship that develops between two men with quite different world views. One, a water carrier whose wife has died twenty years before, spends his days thinking about her. The other, who works in the funeral business, spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure because he recognizes that death will bring an end to all enjoyment....

Abbas, a resident of Cairo, is appointed by the government to hold the office of supervisor in a post office in a small village in Upper Egypt.

On the eve of the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, Israel declares martial law in all the occupied Arab territories without any previous notice. When the villagers of Kafr Kassem returned home from the fields, they were butchered and killed in what is known today as the massacre of “Kafr Kassem”.

A group of Lebanese women try to ease religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in their village.

Freed after spending years in prison, an activist's homecoming turns into a dark affair as his disillusion clashes with his family's expectations. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.

A simple minded peasant was recruited in the Egyptian army where he was deceived to believe that political activists are his homeland enemies, but not for so long.

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simpl...

No amount of squabbling and bickering can prevent a worldly playboy and a prim and prudish woman from falling in love.

Among the inhabitants of Derb el Soltan, a popular district of Casablanca, we highlight the life of a barber who accepts the path that has been traced for him. His close friend never stops teaching him that struggle and resistance are the only qualities of a worthy man.

An enterprising Saudi girl signs on for her school's Koran recitation competition as a way to raise the remaining funds she needs in order to buy the green bicycle that has captured her interest.

A look at the Baath party's project to construct a system of dams.

Salem dreams of being an actor but is still working in a gas station, only his love for Nada can make things easier for him.

The life and times of a Casablanca cafe waiter.

Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparin...

A police officer is chosen in the late 1960s for a unique and lifelong mission: to infiltrate Egypt’s criminal underworld. Stripped of his name and reputation, he adopts a new identity, living among smugglers, dealers, and nightclub owners. Over the years, he rises within this hidden world, all the while trying to balance his secret duty with th...

In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.