Salah Abu Seif (1915-1996)

Alias:
Salah Abou Sayf
Salah Abouseif
Salah Abu Seif
صلاح أبو سيف

Birthplace:
Egypt

Born:
May 10, 1915

Died:
June 22, 1996

Salah Abu Seif (صلاح أبو سيف‎; 1915 – 1996) was one of the most famous Egyptian film directors. Many of the 41 films he directed, many of which were based on novels by Naguib Mahfouz, are considered Egyptian classics.  Known as the Godfather of Egyptian neorealism, Abu Seif pioneered shooting on location - though he also used sets - in places none of his predecessors had dared to visit, like ghurza (the equivalent of old Chinese opium dens), brothels and impoverished areas whose existence had never been officially acknowledged.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Assistant Director:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1976  First Year of Love

Co-Director:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1976  First Year of Love

Director:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1947  The Avenger
1948  The Adventures of Antar and Abla
1949  Shari al-bahlawan
1950  The Hawk
1951  Your Day Will Come
1952  Foreman Hassan
1952  Love Humiliates
1952  Rayya and Sekina
1954  The Beast
1956  The Leech
1957  Sleepless
1957  The Empty Pillow
1957  The Thug
1958  I Am Free
1958  The Barred Road
1958  This is Love
1958  مجرم في إجازة
1959  Between Heaven and Earth
1960  A Beginning and an Ending
1960  Agony of Love
1960  The Girls in Summer
1961  The Sun Will Never Set
1962  Letter from an Unknown Woman
1963  No Time for Love
1966  Cairo 30
1967  The Second Wife
1968  Case 68
1969  A Bit of Torment
1969  Three Women
1971  Dawn of Islam
1973  The Bathhouse of Malatily
1975  The Liar
1976  First Year of Love
1977  Caught in a Honey Trap
1977  The Water-Carrier Is Dead
1978  The Criminal
1981  Al-Qadisiyya
1986  The Beginning
1991  Citizen Masrey
1994  Mr. K

Editor:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1944  Passion and Revenge
1947  The Avenger
1948  The Adventures of Antar and Abla
1949  Shari al-bahlawan
1950  The Hawk
1951  Your Day Will Come
1952  Foreman Hassan
1952  Love Humiliates
1952  Rayya and Sekina
1954  The Beast
1956  The Leech
1957  Sleepless
1957  The Empty Pillow
1957  The Thug
1958  I Am Free
1958  The Barred Road
1958  This is Love
1958  مجرم في إجازة
1959  Between Heaven and Earth
1960  A Beginning and an Ending
1960  Agony of Love
1960  The Girls in Summer
1961  The Sun Will Never Set
1962  Letter from an Unknown Woman
1963  No Time for Love
1966  Cairo 30
1967  The Second Wife
1968  Case 68
1969  A Bit of Torment
1969  Three Women
1971  Dawn of Islam
1973  The Bathhouse of Malatily
1975  The Liar
1976  First Year of Love
1977  Caught in a Honey Trap
1977  The Water-Carrier Is Dead
1978  The Criminal
1981  Al-Qadisiyya
1986  The Beginning
1991  Citizen Masrey
1994  Mr. K

Producer:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1944  Passion and Revenge
1947  The Avenger
1948  The Adventures of Antar and Abla
1949  Shari al-bahlawan
1950  The Hawk
1951  Your Day Will Come
1952  Foreman Hassan
1952  Love Humiliates
1952  Rayya and Sekina
1954  The Beast
1956  The Leech
1957  Sleepless
1957  The Empty Pillow
1957  The Thug
1958  I Am Free
1958  The Barred Road
1958  This is Love
1958  مجرم في إجازة
1959  Between Heaven and Earth
1960  A Beginning and an Ending
1960  Agony of Love
1960  The Girls in Summer
1961  The Sun Will Never Set
1962  Letter from an Unknown Woman
1963  No Time for Love
1966  Cairo 30
1967  The Second Wife
1968  Case 68
1969  A Bit of Torment
1969  Three Women
1971  Dawn of Islam
1973  The Bathhouse of Malatily
1975  The Liar
1976  First Year of Love
1977  Caught in a Honey Trap
1977  The Water-Carrier Is Dead
1978  The Criminal
1981  Al-Qadisiyya
1986  The Beginning
1991  Citizen Masrey
1994  Mr. K

Screenplay:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1944  Passion and Revenge
1947  The Avenger
1948  The Adventures of Antar and Abla
1949  Shari al-bahlawan
1950  The Hawk
1951  Your Day Will Come
1952  Foreman Hassan
1952  Love Humiliates
1952  Rayya and Sekina
1954  The Beast
1956  The Leech
1957  Sleepless
1957  The Empty Pillow
1957  The Thug
1958  I Am Free
1958  The Barred Road
1958  This is Love
1958  مجرم في إجازة
1959  Between Heaven and Earth
1960  A Beginning and an Ending
1960  Agony of Love
1960  The Girls in Summer
1961  The Sun Will Never Set
1962  Letter from an Unknown Woman
1963  No Time for Love
1966  Cairo 30
1967  The Second Wife
1968  Case 68
1969  A Bit of Torment
1969  Three Women
1971  Dawn of Islam
1973  The Bathhouse of Malatily
1975  The Liar
1976  First Year of Love
1977  Caught in a Honey Trap
1977  The Water-Carrier Is Dead
1978  The Criminal
1981  Al-Qadisiyya
1986  The Beginning
1991  Citizen Masrey
1994  Mr. K

Writer:
1937  Salama Is Fine
1939  The Will
1944  Passion and Revenge
1947  The Avenger
1948  The Adventures of Antar and Abla
1949  Shari al-bahlawan
1950  The Hawk
1951  Your Day Will Come
1952  Foreman Hassan
1952  Love Humiliates
1952  Rayya and Sekina
1954  The Beast
1956  The Leech
1957  Sleepless
1957  The Empty Pillow
1957  The Thug
1958  I Am Free
1958  The Barred Road
1958  This is Love
1958  مجرم في إجازة
1959  Between Heaven and Earth
1960  A Beginning and an Ending
1960  Agony of Love
1960  The Girls in Summer
1961  The Sun Will Never Set
1962  Letter from an Unknown Woman
1963  No Time for Love
1966  Cairo 30
1967  The Second Wife
1968  Case 68
1969  A Bit of Torment
1969  Three Women
1971  Dawn of Islam
1973  The Bathhouse of Malatily
1975  The Liar
1976  First Year of Love
1977  Caught in a Honey Trap
1977  The Water-Carrier Is Dead
1978  The Criminal
1981  Al-Qadisiyya
1986  The Beginning
1991  Citizen Masrey
1994  Mr. K
2002  The Ostrich and the Peacock

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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.