Youssef Chahine Renowned Egyptian Filmmaker Dies

Youssef Chahine, an Egyptian filmmaker whose work over nearly five decades made him a renowned figure in Arab cinema, died Sunday at Al Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo. He was 82. Chahine fell into a coma last month after suffering a brain hemorrhage and was flown to France in critical condition for treatment. According to Egypt's official news agency, MENA, he was returned to Cairo for further treatment.

Chahine was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. His “body of work [is] as full and satisfying as that of any Hollywood auteur," critic Dave Kehr wrote in Film Comment. “Like many of his American studio counterparts, Chahine seemed to thrive on his interaction with the system, tackling an impossibly wide range of genre assignments and managing to impose his unmistakable signature on each one."

Since the early 1990s, his sometimes politically controversial films began to draw opposition from Islamic fundamentalist elements in Egypt. In 1994, his film “The Emigrant" was banned after a fundamentalist lawyer objected that its plot was based on the story of Joseph, found in the Bible and the Koran. The depiction of prophets is banned under most interpretations of Islam.