عمارة يعقوبيان The Yacoubian Building

A once elegant, now shabby Cairo high-rise harbors its residents’ secret needs in a move that criss-crosses between a myriad of plot lines that deal with such traditionally taboo subjects as homosexuality, fundamentalism, corruption and prostitution. The most expensive film in Egyptian history, this juicy epic runs the gamut of the social spectrum.


The Yacoubian Building, a sprawling epic film about the contradictory forces that determine lives in contemporary Egypt. Based on a best-selling novel by Alaa Al Aswany, the story has several characters dealing with various hardships that accompany life in a repressive country where the fight between modernity and religious fanaticism drags on.

The ostensibly simple title is that of an actual Cairo apartment block. Built in the ’30s, the Yacoubian Building was once one of the most prestigious addresses in the city, home of the wealthy and privileged. It stood as a potent symbol of the new Egypt, a country that was feeling pulled in the direction of European-style modernity.

The brilliance of Al Aswany’s novel was the way in which it showed how the disparate pressures facing modern Egypt have effectively been tearing it apart. The film works extremely well, and it’s all the more surprising given that it’s the first feature of Marwan Hamed, who was 28 when he shot the film. The Yacoubian Building has received international notice for its brazen, unapologetic inclusion of a laundry list of themes that dare not speak their name in most Middle East countries, including prostitution, abortion and homosexuality. Also to the filmmaker’s credit, there is no attempt to whitewash the Egyptian police and government. (Rest assured the Egyptian tourism bureau had nothing to do with this film.)

Central to the story is a man who’s fallen from the aristocracy, who is now spending his time pursuing sexual dalliances. Played by one of Egypt’s most venerable actors, Adel Imam, he is an essentially decent man who now watches in horror as his country seems to be sliding away from the modern ideal he once hoped for. At one point in the film, he stops in the street late in the night, drunk, and screams out one of Yacoubian Building’s main questions: what the hell has happened to this country?

Imam’s struggles are matched by sub-plots involving terrorism, state torture, abortion, a repressed gay newspaper editor and his soldier boyfriend, rampant corruption and dodgy elections. It’s a towering melodrama, highly ambitious but satisfying. Hamed deserves praise for creating something so illuminating and unblinking from a country known for censorship.