Al-mummia

In 1881, priceless artefacts from the Tanite dynasty appeared on the black market. The Horabat tribe probed to have secretly robbed the tombs of the pharaohs in Thebes. After intra-clan conflict one member went to the police. Al mumia: The Night of Counting the Years is part of the World Cinema Project founded by Martin Scorsese. In 2009, for the presentation of the film’s restoration he wrote:

"The picture was extremely difficult to see from the 70s onward. I managed to screen a 16mm print which, like all the prints I’ve seen since, had gone magenta. Yet I still found it an entrancing and oddly moving experience.... Momia has an extremely unusual tone – stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of time and the sadness it carries. The carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the desolate settings, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene – they all work in perfect harmony and contribute to the feeling of fateful inevitability. Past and present, desecration and veneration, the urge to conquer death and the acceptance that we, and all we know, will turn to dust…"