Mustapha Al-Akkad: A Cinematic Puzzle
By Maged Hebtah
For those who do not remember the name, Mustapha Al-Akkad is the director of The Message and Lion of the Desert, two great films that established his name as an internationally renowned director.
Dozens of questions have been triggered about why the screening of The Message has been banned in Egyptian cinemas and on official TV channels of several countries despite the fact that it has been successfully screened almost all over the globe. The puzzle gets more complicated when considering that Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest religious institution, approved of the movie’s screenplay. The need for the movie’s director to shed light on these issues has hence been pressing.
In my interview with him, he talked about the many projects he hopes to realize in the future. One of these is the Saladin movie for which he has failed to find a financer over the past twenty years, in spite of the fact that the famous actor Sean Connery has expressed his willingness to star in it. Al-Akkad also spoke about how his reputation has been tarnished by embarrassed directors who attributed their failed cinematic projects to him.
The director still waits for a helping hand to share in the fulfillment of his dreams and realization of his projects—projects which, he believes, the Arab world is more badly in need of than the building of arms arsenals from which no single bullet will be fired in the end.
Source: Islam Online
For those who do not remember the name, Mustapha Al-Akkad is the director of The Message and Lion of the Desert, two great films that established his name as an internationally renowned director.
Dozens of questions have been triggered about why the screening of The Message has been banned in Egyptian cinemas and on official TV channels of several countries despite the fact that it has been successfully screened almost all over the globe. The puzzle gets more complicated when considering that Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest religious institution, approved of the movie’s screenplay. The need for the movie’s director to shed light on these issues has hence been pressing.
In my interview with him, he talked about the many projects he hopes to realize in the future. One of these is the Saladin movie for which he has failed to find a financer over the past twenty years, in spite of the fact that the famous actor Sean Connery has expressed his willingness to star in it. Al-Akkad also spoke about how his reputation has been tarnished by embarrassed directors who attributed their failed cinematic projects to him.
The director still waits for a helping hand to share in the fulfillment of his dreams and realization of his projects—projects which, he believes, the Arab world is more badly in need of than the building of arms arsenals from which no single bullet will be fired in the end.
Source: Islam Online
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