The tenth anniversary of the death of Egyptian director Mohamed Khan is passing in a few days. He died on the 26th of this month in 2016. He had suffered a health crisis days before his death, from which he did not recover, and passed away in a Cairo hospital.

Over the past 10 years, few Egyptian films worthy of appreciation and admiration have been released, not because aspiring directors capable of making good works are completely absent, but because the purely commercial trend in Egyptian cinema has grown more ferocious and has become the first choice and the main title of its productions, supported by Arab audiences. There is progress in the use of technology in action films and many young actors performing, but there is no real concern for the intrinsic value of cinema.

The whole situation is not surprising. It had already become widespread in Mohamed Khan's days. Between 'Sweet Day... Bitter Day' (1988) and his later film 'Days of Sadat' (2001), 12 years passed. And between 'Heliopolis Apartment' (2007) and his next film 'Factory Girl' (2014), seven lean years passed, because producers washed their hands of directors of his caliber, whose works do not yield satisfactory profits.

Egyptian director Mohamed Khan in an archival photo (Cinema.com)

Between 1979 and 2014, Khan made 24 feature films. Looking at them today, one finds them more diverse than previously appeared. True, he worked on suspense-oriented films like 'Sunstroke' (1979), 'Revenge' (1980), 'Half a Rabbit' (1982), and 'Knight of the City' (1992), but most of his films were social with serious content. Among them were comedies like 'Left and Never Returned' (1984) and others centered on a person torn between emotional and family loyalties, such as 'The Hustler' (1983) and 'Return of a Citizen' (1986), and one, 'Days of Sadat', was a biographical film. Even those films that can be described as suspenseful were never devoid of a social vision and serious treatment of their characters.

Hind Kamel and Nabila Fathy in the film 'Dreams of Hind and Camelia' (Egypt International)

Early Signs

His debut in feature films, after a few short films, was embodied in a film written by the late Fayed Ghaly and starring Nour El-Sherif, who also produced the film. That was 'Sunstroke', which carried several features of what Mohamed Khan's style would be in his subsequent films. It is a film about Cairo and its mazes. That does not mean it is good in every aspect of its work; the night photography is weak in lighting distribution, Kamal Bakeer's music is overused, and there are gaps in the writing, such as a press photographer leaving his camera on his bicycle and then being surprised it was stolen. Alongside these, Khan began a fruitful artistic relationship with editor Nadia Shokry that lasted a long time.

But what the film reveals are successfully executed outdoor shooting designs, an important feature in Khan's later films through which he captures the city's pulse.

We will note that Khan, from this film until his wonderful film 'The Hustler' (1983), worked with only two writers, Fayed Ghaly and Bashir El-Deek, and one cinematographer, Said Shimi, who quickly covered the flaws of Khan's first film and became one of the supporters of the director's and his generation's style.

Two of Khan's films were adapted from foreign films: 'Desire', based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel 'The Great Gatsby', which had been filmed several times, the best being Jack Clayton's 1974 version, and 'Revenge' (1980), taken from the American Western film 'The Bravados' (Henry King, 1958). In both, the story was transformed to suit Egyptian society.

Between 1979 and 2014, Khan made 24 feature films.

Women and Men

Khan's fourth film, 'Dinner Date', came in 1981 from a screenplay by Bashir El-Deek, who wrote a romantic story about a married woman (Soad Hosny) to a domineering man (Hosny Famey), who relives her love for a young man she knew earlier (Ahmed Zaki in his first collaboration with the director). What can be noted here is the actual beginning of Mohamed Khan's interest in women in his films, which he expressed in 'Wife of an Important Man' in terms of depicting the relationship between a tyrannical man and a woman deserving a better life. The film impressed director Anu Quadri, who later adapted it for the British film 'Clara'.

There is another deprived wife in Khan's next film, 'Bird on the Road' (1981), played by Ferdous Abdel Hamid alongside Ahmed Zaki (second collaboration) and Farid Shawq, before the director returned to action cinema in 'Half a Rabbit' (1982).

'The Hustler' in 1984 witnessed the maturation of all those previous visions and treatments. A drama about the marginalized. A film more realistic than anything Khan had done until then, and one of his best films alongside 'Wife of an Important Man', 'Dreams of Hind and Camelia', 'Return of a Citizen', and 'Supermarket' (1990). In these films, Khan's frustrated characters evolve—they have reached the end of their roads and have no choice but to accept what they have achieved and resign themselves to what has not been realized.

'Knight of the City' (1992) is another wonderful film and a good launch for its lead Mahmoud Hemida, and in my opinion, the best suspense film Khan made. It is more than an action film about a man torn between life's concerns and emotions.

And since space is insufficient to list all of Khan's other works, such as 'A Very Hot Day' (1994), 'Days of Sadat' (2001), and 'Factory Girl' (2014), each conveyed a truthful picture of life in Egypt. Even 'Left and Never Returned' (1984), with Yehia El-Fakharani, Lebleba, and Farid Shawq, begins in Cairo but its events take place in the countryside, where the forgotten beauty of life lies.

It is necessary to pause at his final film, 'Before the Summer Crowds' (2016), which did not find much interest among Arab critics. But it is a wonderful film, a romantic story without declaring itself as such. This film carried a special breeze, as if it were a declaration of love from Khan for cinema, in the simplicity of its elements and the depth of its meanings.