The Dupes

What could change in the life of el bultai family after the death of their grand el sayed el bultai .

Based on the novel by Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim, 1937, Diary of A Country Prosecutor records the daily activities and tribulations of a public official appointed to act as a village justice in the countryside.

A sick doctor is admitted to an isolated sanatorium located in the middle of a desolate desert. As a patient, he becomes aware of the discrepancy that exists between the conditions of the privileged patients, who are well-treated, and the poor ones, who particularly suffer from a lack of water. With the help of the doctor, the poor patients rebel and undertake to restore justice and order in the hospital.

Three students, Adel, Hassanein, and Samir, face personal struggles. Adel is rejected by his father for loving his neighbor’s daughter, Hassanein seeks revenge for his father’s murder, and Samir deals with parental neglect after his parents’ divorce. Samir’s relationship with a maid leads to complications, prompting him to seek help from a dancer, Gamalat, for an abortion. The trio robs a bar for abortion money but finds it insufficient. Saidyh dies during the abortion, and Gamalat’s call to neighbors and the police results in their arrest and a fifteen-year prison sentence.

A difficult period in Egypt in the year 1947, when the villages of Egypt attacked cholera. A doctor (Shukri), who tried to serve the villagers to save them from poverty and hunger, is appointed in a village. (Adel Bey) The feudal lord of the village exploits its people to work on his land as forced labor and whoever objects to hand him over to a mental hospital, taking advantage of his influence.

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 1959, underground revolutionaries try to assassinate Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Kassem in Baghdad. News reports claim they have failed, and at first the revolutionaries lay low, but as the secret police continue to comb the neighborhoods with house-to-house searches, they flee to the countryside. Among those fleeing is Saddam Hussein, the future president of the republic.

Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in "Alexandria, Why?" and "An Egyptian Story". Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.