The Beginning and the End (1960) Characters, Setting & Themes Explained

Release, runtime and language

1960 · 130 mins · Arabic

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Directed by

Salah Abu Seif

Starring

Omar Sharif, Mohamed Hamdy, Amina Rizk, Kamal Hussein, Farid Shawqy, Sanaa Gamil

Set in the Cairo suburbs in the late 1930s, the film follows a middle‑class Egyptian family coping with the death of the father, their sole breadwinner. The mother and her four children—three brothers and their sister Nefisah—struggle to keep the household from slipping into poverty, yet each sibling pursues a different, often desperate direction.