Return of the Prodigal Son
(Awadet el-Ibn el-Dal)

A tragedy both intimate and collective, where revolutionary fervor turns into disillusionment. In the stifling heat of an Egyptian household, Chahine observes Ali’s return as one might study a fractured myth — that of an ideal shattered against the contradictions of reality. The characters, caught in the ebb and flow of their hopes, become the figures of a nation out of breath. The expansive and lyrical mise-en-scène turns songs, silence, and gestures into instruments of lucid pain. Everything teeters between the dream of emancipation and the fatality of repetition. Rather than the return of a man, Chahine concentrates on the impossible return of faith — faith in community, in revolution, in the promise of a better world. Beneath the ruins of utopia remains the tragic beauty of a gaze — that of a man who still believes in cinema. Jérôme Baron