Once Upon a Time the Nile
(El Nil Wal Haya)

In Un jour, le nil, Chahine films the construction of the Aswan Dam as a founding myth as well as an intimate rupture. The river — once a symbol of fertility and renewal — becomes the stage of an irreversible upheaval, whereupon progress is both a promise and the agent of uproot. Through the fate of engineers, peasants, and workers, Chahine questions Egyptian modernity — its impulses and its wounds. His film belongs to its ensemble and is animated by a documentary energy bordering on the tragic. The Nile is no longer merely a nurturing current; it becomes the mirror of a people, the metaphor of a nation learning to shape itself at the risk of losing its memory. Jérôme Baron