Khadiga lives in a poor neighborhood with her parents. She tries to save up money so she could marry her sweetheart Taha. Taha buys a lottery ticket in hope of winning a lot of money, but it ends up in Khadiga's religious father's hands who throws it away. The ticket gets picked up by the town's fool, who gets lucky and wins, driving the town into chaos.
In the blasting heat of a Friday afternoon in Cairo, a group of people – among them a movie star, a thief, a madman, a cook and a pregnant woman – find themselves trapped in an elevator for 12 hours.
Sherif visits a psychiatrist for his illness who exploits him to commit a murder by hypnotism.
Amid the poverty, death, and suffering caused by World War II, 18-year-old Yehia retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of studying filmmaking in America but struggles to pursue his dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.
Rebel Ibrahim Hamdy assassinates a pro-colonial Prime Minister but is arrested and hides with a fellow university student, who initially refuses but eventually accepts him. Abdul Hamid Khatib meets Samia and her cousin, and Ibrahim uses the situation to hasten Samia’s marriage, which she rejects. Nawal, the youngest daughter, becomes the liaison between Ibrahim and his colleagues, helping him escape. Abdul Hamid tries to inform the political police of Ibrahim’s location, but Samia stops him. The head of the political police suspects them and punishes them to find Ibrahim. Ibrahim refuses to leave the country, returning to fight colonialism and participating in an operation.
Mahgoub is a villager who moves to Cairo in search of a better life. When he enlists friend Salem's help to find him a job, Salem not only gets him a job at the ministry where he works but he finds him a bride as well. But the bride is the mistress of Qasem Bek, who will be visiting her once a week.
Set in the suburbs of Cairo in the late 1930s, the story follows a middle-class Egyptian family grappling with the hardships of life after the death of their father, their sole breadwinner. The mother and her four children—three brothers and their sister, Nefisah—struggle to avoid slipping into poverty. They all go in different directions which aren't exactly good.
A courier is sent to deposit a cash amount to the bank but he arrives late. He goes to a hotel to spend the night and keeps the money in the hotel safe, but he gets confused with the Prince of Kandahar and who admires him and insists on keeping this confusion to reveal his enemies.
Actress Sanaa Kamel is found murdered on her bed, and an investigation starts, taking into account everyone of the guests she hosted at her apartment the night she was killed: her jealous fiancé, a school instructor, a corrupt market manager, one of Sanaa's friends who works as a contractor, and a stud who was Sanaa's secret lover. As the investigation progresses, all the conclusions about the characters are always under question.
When a free-spirited sailor is found murdered, his twin brother, a famous novelist, is the prime suspect. Investigators uncover a possible liaison between the dead sailor and the writer's wife, and also learn that Sayed's successful fictions owed much to the inspiration of his brother Mahmoud's adventurous life. Just as the evidence against the writer seems overwhelming, Mahmoud turns up alive. But why are the twins never seen together...?
Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...
Based on Tharwat Abaza's short story, 'Shey min al Khawf' takes place in a rural Egyptian village. Atris' reign of terror on the villagers is put to the test when a public act of defiance is carried out by Fu'ada, the object of his affection.
Set during the Six-Day War, the connection between a group of Egyptian soldiers on a passage in the desert and the command center drops. They try to survive despite the enemy attacks and lack of ammunition and supplies.
In 1933 in the village of Karnak in Luxor, sad lives with her husband Bakhit Bishari paraplegic and TB disease.
A girl leaves behind her past life as a dancer working in Mohammed Ali Street and enters college. Her ambition is to acquire knowledge and to leave behind her former life. She finds herself in a relationship with a young man from an affluent background and thus becomes conflicted between her two lives.
A portrayal of the lives of four friends who have different dreams and aspirations; Ahmed falls in love with a girl he saw once, Sayed gets in trouble when he sells the laboratory animals, Abbas who is married to a woman that doesn't love him, and Ali who works in illegal operations.
Attia (Yehia al-Fakharani) works as a simple employee, after his mother-in-law threatens to break his engagement from her daughter because of his delay in getting an apartment. He travels to his hometown to sell his inheritance. There he falls in love with Kharyia (Leila Alawi) daughter of Kamal Bey (Farid Shawki) who bought his land.
Nada meets the pilot officer Adel at a party with her liberal colleague Safaa, and goes out with him in the plane he is piloting. She is absent from school, which causes her problems as the headmistress informs the mother of her daughter’s absence. Adel proposes to her, but her family refuses her marriage to the officer and forces her to get engaged to... Her cousin after insulting and beating her.
Zaatar is a thief who works for Zaghloul the owner of an import and export company. Zaghloul exploits Zaatar and makes him smuggle goods from customs. Zaatar gets to know Siham,the sister of officer Mohammed, and they fall in love and he starts working on his own and competes with Zaghloul.
A family inherits their father's drug business which leads to their undoing.