The Mummy has been named the greatest movie ever created in the Arabic world.
To celebrate their tenth anniversary year, thinkers at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) embarked on what has been described as the greatest survey of the region’s cinema ever conducted.
They approached a total of 475 prominent film directors, critics and actors, both from inside outside the Arabic world, and asked them to choose their top ten movies from the region.
The results have been pulled together to compile a comprehensive list of the ‘100 Greatest Arabic Films’.
Topping the list is Chadi Abdel Salam’s 1969 classic The Mummy (Al-Mummia), an influential classic which marked the transition of Egypt’s cinema from realism to post realism.
The final list of 100 films was unveiled by on DIFF on November 6 2013, ahead of the tenth edition of the festival, which runs between December 6 and 14.
Also from Egypt, two of Youssef Chahine’s classics, Cairo Station (1958) and The Land (1969), sit at second and fourth place respectively. Meanwhile North Africa is further represented by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s (1975) film Chronicle of the Years of Fire, which portrays the Algerian struggle for independence, in third place.
