About the family of Youssef Chahine, Producer Marian Khoury presented her documentary film “Ehkeely” in the official competition of the Cairo International Film Festival.
The two-hour film tells the autobiography of the family of late international director Youssef Chahine in the form of a realistic humanistic analysis of the lives of the different generations of that family; from Shaheen's grandmother's mother to his sister's mother, Marian, to her daughter, the family's granddaughter, Sarah, who studies cinema in Cuba.
The film revolves in a sequence of storytelling, with scenes from "Hadwat Masrya", which tells the same biography of the family in the form of a dramatic film, but through various novels from "Marian" and her aunt and recordings with her uncle director “youssef shahien” and discussions with her daughter.
While the film appears to be unprofessional as Marian runs and adjusts the camera position from time to time, the performance of the famous artistic family was not artificial; it was natural and spontaneous and includes real scenes of the family meeting at events and their natural conversations taking place in each house. Fiji Eli, the brother of Harian, was beaten by Ellis Shaheen with a cane as a child.
In addition to talking to Youseef shahin, who tells her about his mother, sister and husband who he did not like even though they have worked together for years; he says that it once arrived that he was mediating Helmi Rafla the director to send oral messages with him to Shaheen about the work so as not to talk to him. This suggests that Marian intended to send a message to the spectator that her family speaks and reacts like any normal Egyptian family to portray her film as honest and humane.
The film confirms that the Shaheen’s story about his family was completely true in all its positive and negative aspects, as if the documentary film is an extension of Shaheen's famous self-narrative films with the addition of many memorial photos and documents.
As for the details of the film, Marian said before the screening of “Ehkeely” that it was filmed in nine years, the production is completely subjective, stressing that the family speaks French with Arabic at home and that does not mean that the film is French, but it is pure Egyptian.
It is noteworthy that “Ehkeely” is the only Egyptian representative in the official international competition of the festival; questionnaires were distributed to viewers for evaluation after the end of its screening.
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