The first time I saw Youssef Chahine’s 1969 classic The Land was just a few months after Cairo’s art house cinema Zawya opened its doors in 2014. Run by Chahine’s own Misr International Films, tucked away in an alley in downtown Cairo at the time, Zawya shows films alternative to the mainstream Egyptian and Hollywood pictures filling Egyptian cinemas.

It felt like a fitting setting to show a retrospective of Chahine’s films, subversive in their own right, in this space but also at that moment in time – a historical moment following a military coup and the Egyptian revolution’s failure to overturn decades of military rule. When watching it in 2014, and 2025, to write this essay, it struck me how timeless the film’s story was – a struggle against tyranny and oppression that rang true in 1969 when the film was released, in the 1930s when the film was set, and in the two times I watched it, more than a decade apart.

Set in the 1930s and based on the 1954 novel by Abdelrahman al-Sharqawy, The Land tells the story of an unnamed rural village in Egypt whose peasants struggle to water their land with the limited water supply imposed by the government and facilitated by the corrupt Omda (unelected mayor). The film opens with a close-up of its protagonist, Mohamed Abu Sweilam (Mahmoud El-Meleigy, in what is arguably his most memorable role), holding his crop, panning to his disappointed face at the limited resources his land has. From the start, Chahine ties Abu Sweilam to the land – immediately sealing his fate.

Throughout the film, we see parallels through the characters and their transformations to the Egyptian historical narrative and struggle. Abu Sweilam’s daughter Wassifa (Nagwa Ibrahim) is shown as the most special girl in the village and a clear representation of Egypt. At the start of the film, she is obsessed with leaving the village and going to Cairo for its luxuries – a nod to disconnecting from the land and embracing modernity. We also see her in a love triangle between Abdelhady (Ezzat al-Alayly), a simple, but loyal and dedicated land laborer who closely resembles a young version of her father, and Mohamed Affendi (Hamdy Ahmed), a Cairo-educated neighbor who represents detachment from the land. As the plot thickens, we see her slowly abandoning her urban dreams and joining the struggle to protect her land and support her father.

The question of loyalty to the land and standing up to the oppressor is constantly juxtaposed with the embrace of modernity, and accepting the change imposed by the tyrant throughout the film. We see it in Sheikh Hassouna’s (Yehia Chahine) own story arc, where he goes from being a comrade of Abu Sweilam’s, reminiscing about their shared history of political activism in the 1919 revolution, to eventually betraying the cause for his own self interest, abandoning the village and its struggle – another symbol of the cyclical nature of Egypt’s struggle with tyranny, colonization, and oppression throughout its history.

A powerful scene that shows this cyclical nature is when the men of the village sit on their land after they were rounded up and tortured by authorities. Despite the traumatic event they just went through (and for Abu Sweilam, it wasn’t even the first time) they reminisce and laugh hysterically at what they’ve just experienced. I couldn’t help but tie this to a similar scene from filmmaker Bassam Mortada’s documentary Abu Zaabal 89 (2024), which recounts his father’s imprisonment for political activism in the 1980s. In the documentary, we see Bassam’s father, Mahmoud, and his comrades in fits of laughter recalling the truly horrific experiences they had in incarceration. Laughter at one’s sorrow and despair is as synonymous with Egyptian culture as fava beans for breakfast.

A recipient of the Cannes Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, Chahine thrives in world-building. From locations to costumes, powerful compositions and music, we are immersed in the universes he develops, and The Land is no exception. While we never know where in Egypt the village is, the rich environment, the layered scenes, emotional music, and the powerful imagery leave us mesmerized, and one can truly appreciate them in the remastered version released by Misr International Films.

While the film is set in the 1930s, a time when Egypt was still ruled under a foreign monarchy with strong ties to its former British colonizers, the film was actually released in 1969, after the Six-Day War defeat – locally Naksa – where Egypt (along with Syria and Jordan) lost the war and consecutively part of their land to Israel. In this context, the film is not only a reflection of the loss of agricultural land, but also political land. It also belongs to a political and cinematic moment post-Naksa, reflecting collective disappointment in the Nasserist project. Several films produced around this time featured themes of dictatorship, tyranny, and revolution through stories set in the Egyptian countryside – that same countryside championed by Gamal Abdel-Nasser in his socialist reforms. These works include Salah Abu Seif’s The Second Wife and Hussein Kamal’s A Taste of Fear, classics in their own right.

While many of these post-Naksa films chose to take a positive outlook towards the future despite the widespread sense of defeat, Chahine opted to record a more grim reality. Throughout the film, Abu Sweilam calls for the village to come together against the tyrants as the only way to win, failing with each trial – whether because they are tricked by the land owners, because of their internal strifes, or because their attempts at rebellion are obstructed by violence and imprisonment. We see their efforts in uniting and organizing, but ultimately never quite managing to bring about any real change – a bitter reality plaguing Egyptian politics for centuries.

As the film closes on another close-up of Abu Sweilam holding his crops, this time the disappointment from the first scene is replaced with determination to not let it go, ending on a freeze frame of his bloodied hands digging into the soil as he’s dragged away by authorities. Despite our knowledge that the tyrants won this round, we are left wondering about the fate of the village, and the country as a whole.