Atef Salem has managed to finish directing his new film “Fares Dhahr Al Khail” (Horseback Knight) despite a crushing illness that forced him to use a wheelchair on the set.
The renowned director was struck with complications from a stroke while shooting the preliminary scenes of the film in 1997. Filming was stopped for a few months, and then resumed after the director’s health improved.
Salem, who has spent 60 years of his life behind the camera, told the Emirati daily Al Bayan “I hope my film will be screened at the opening of one of the major upcoming Egyptian film festivals.”
The film is one of the most important in the director’s body of work, which critics say has enriched society and helped raise solutions for many social issues and problems. Salem’s films include “Umm Alarousah” (Bride’s Mother), “Ihna Attalamza” (We Students) and upwards of 100 other successes.
The movie explores the conditions during and after World War Two through the life of an English widow who loses her husband in the war.
After the war is over, she comes to Egypt to visit the grave of her husband in the Egyptian desert of El Alamein, but cannot locate his tombstone, so she has a nervous breakdown.
The widow decides to look for the remains of her husband, and finally manages to reach a man called Fares who worked as a messenger for her husband during his military service - Albawaba.com
