Chitchat on the Nile

Chitchat on the Nile, (in French): Chitchat sur le Nile, (in Arabic): ثرثره فوق النيل

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Is considered the most famous egyptian/arabic movie of all time. It's written by Nobel Prize in Literature Naguib Mahfouz. It mainly talks about the decadence of the Egyptian society during the Gamal Abdel Nasser era of ruling egypt.

It talks about a simple egyptian worker (done by Imad Hamdy actor) who can't tolerate the hypocrisy of the Egyptian government and the illteracy of the egyptian public and decide to hide from all the problems in the country Egypt by simply taking the Shisha which is a popular smoking habit in egypt and usually added drugs in it to make the mind fly away from all problems.

Imad Hamdy (who used to work as a teacher) meets with an old student(actor Ahmad Ramzi) by chance. Ramzi invites him to the small boat in the nile. And Imad discovers soon enough that he isn't the only person who smokes Shisha but a bunch of other Elite(high class), middle class and low class people are all on this boat on the Nile River.

He soon discovers that everyone is smoking to forget the reality and hypocrisy of Egyptian economy, life and illiteracy.

At the end of the movie, Imad Hamdy decideds to stop smoking the Shisha and so stop taking drugs. But soon left alone in the street as a crazy person because he was screaming to everyone (don't smoke Hashish) and everyone considered him crazy. In other sense he was considered trying to take the egyptian people out of being smoked.

The film was released at the era of Anwar al-Sadat President of Egypt Nobel Peace Price winner and was soon taken out quickly from the market because the film was seen as a critism of the Gamal Abdel Nasser President socialism period and opression of all the artistic films at the Nasser's time where it was forbidden to do any film at his time but if it stated that rich are asshole and poor are the only good people. But yet Anwar al-Sadat didn't want to upset the egyptian people who still few of them loved and respected Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The film is is now distributed by Founoon Distribution and it's one of the film that touched the arab and western world at the same time. The film is also subtitled with French and English which is not a common thing in the egyptian DVDs market.

And even though that the film might seem as a drug problem but it's actually a political controvesial movie. Where everyone is trying to forget the hypocrisy of the egyptian society by simply taking Hashish or any other drug to forget the harsh reality of Egypt.

The weird thing about this movie that it's facts is still applicable to today's reality in Egypt. The film was produced in 1971 and lost a lot of money and is only respected 35 years later. And even though the world now is more open than 35 years ago but it's still forbidden in many countries both arabic and western especially opressed countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.