Egyptian film producers turn to war, spies
Despite the prolific cinema sector in Egypt, the country’s military and espionage history has hardly featured in films — but this may change.
The success of the Netflix film “The Angel,” the story of a controversial Egyptian who leaked critical information to Israel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, has aroused interest in the country’s recent spy history.
The film, based on Israeli author Uri Bar-Joseph’s book "The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel," narrates how Ashraf Marwan, son-in-law of late President Gamal Abdel Nasser and a close adviser to Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, became an Israeli spy. The Egyptian position, however, is that Marwan did not betray Egypt, but that he was a double agent who gave misleading information to the Israeli intelligence. Former President Hosni Mubarak hailed Marwan as a "faithful patriot" at his funeral 10 years ago.
Despite the prodigious cinema sector in Egypt, the country’s four wars with Israel and its military have hardly been a dominant subject in films, except for a handful of projects carried out by Egyptian non-military producers. The best-known examples date back to the 1950s and 1960s and include "Ismail Yassine Fil Geish” ("Ismail Yassine in the Army") and “Ismail Yassine Fil Tayyaran” ("Ismail Yassine in the Air Force" — films whose premieres were attended by Abdel Nasser himself.
Maj. Gen. Mohsen Abdel Nabi, then-director of the Egyptian Armed Forces Morale Affairs Department, announced October 2017 that the department would collaborate with private production companies to produce three films on Egypt’s victories in the 1973 war, but to date no production has started.
