Youssef Chahine's 1958 Egyptian drama Bab el hadid / Cairo Station received international recognition following its screening at the Berlin Film Festival. In addition to directing the social drama, Chahine beautifully plays one of the film's key characters, a shy cripple in love with a good-looking blonde. The film's dialogue was provided by Mohamed Abu Youssef and Abdel Hay Adib.
"When Youssef Chahine made Cairo Station in 1958," wrote Gaby Wood in The Observer, "Egyptian audiences were confused and disturbed. They weren't used to the gritty, neo-realist style Chahine had borrowed from Italy, and they couldn't follow the numerous intersecting plots. But now that Cairo Station is being re-released as part of a Chahine retrospective (Chahine, who was born in 1926, has made more than 40 films and won a Palme d'Or in 1997 for Destiny) we can see how brilliantly it predates Robert Altman."
Clip posted by josericardo07.