Sleepless Nights (2003) User Reviews

Definitely worth the watch

[wessamz · 8/10 · 9 July 2005]

Definitely one of the FEW good movies that were released lately..

On the contrary..of one of the above comments the so called sexual scenes... & i don't think it should be rated above 18 anyway.. there was no sexual content.. maybe mature content.. & there's a difference.. - so there was no explicit scenes as mentioned in one of the comments above.

the movie tried & definitely for some did solve lots of common problems in the society... & that means that the movie has passed. it sure gave new insights to the cinema , especially these days.. while surrounded by useless romantic comedies or just plain pure comedies which i am fine with.. but that movie was a light in the dark... if few more movies like that one were released.. i'd have better expectation about the Egyptian cinema's future. The script : Excellent The story : Very Good story acting : not all the actors were great but most of them were. let me tell you, the actresses were brilliant all of them..

Hope more of these movies are released.. the kind of movies that face problems & solve them.

Finally an Egyptian movie that has the potential to be a worldwide hit..

[michel_effeich · 10/10 · 11 August 2003]

I think that what makes "Sahar El Layali" so different from all the other Egyptian movies is that it is a bold attempt at criticizing and analyzing problems that are witnessed by youth in their early marital lives in Egypt and maybe in the whole world as well.

In the midst of all the thoughtless comedies appearing in Egyptian theatres every week, such a deep movie is a breath of fresh air and something which implies that Egypt can produce good movies provided that the creators ignore the usual saying of "this is what the public wants" in order to guarantee easy revenues.

The movie impresses right from the very beginning with an excellent star-packed cast comprising some of the best young actors in the Egyptian scene; Mona Zaki and her husband Ahmed Helmi (husband in real life), in addition to Hanan Turk, Ola Ghanem, Khaled abou El Naga, Fathi Abd El Wahab, Gihan Fadel and last but far from least Sherif Mounir.

My review would not include spoilers because I think everybody has to see and enjoy this movie but in brief the movie describes the inter-relations between 4 young couples and the problems that they face in either their marital lives or emotional / love relationships. This is where the movies is bold as it depicts real-life problems in outstanding realism that hits the unprepared audience who might have bought tickets to watch a comic movie like the vast majority of the movie in the scene nowadays.

The acting was superb from the whole cast but Sherif Mounir (being the most experienced actor) and Gihan Fadel shone out as the real driving forces of the movie handling the most difficult and emotionally complex roles with extreme talent.

The movie is not all drama and has its adequate sense of humor that actually adds to the experience. The use of Fayrouz's classic song "Sahar El Layali" was a brilliant idea and well integrated into the movie.

The movie was attacked, however, for its boldness as well as a couple of scenes that were considered to have sexual content. In my opinion, such scenes, if any, were essential to the plot of the movie and the movie would suffer if edited in any way. Furthermore, and due to the nature of the movie, the content and the adult dialogue, the movie's director assigned an "Adults Only" banner which was made very clear on the movies posters (which were very nicely done by the way) so such scenes would be forgiven in the light of the age restriction imposed on the movie.

In the very end, I would like to say why I wrote this review which happens to be my first on IMDB (wonderful site by the way). When a movie like this comes around, and you find some people attacking it in a rather narrow minded manner, you have to speak for its defense in the hope that more of this good stuff arrives.

Finally, this movie might be what the Egyptian movie industry needed to know that movies with plot and not only comedy can succeed. I voted a flawless 10/10 for this movie and would suggest that anyone interested in Arabic-speaking movies MUST see this movie regardless of the user rating it gets at the end.

Controversial for the Arab world, boring for Europe.

[foxman-1 · 4 December 2004]

I just came from the Black Nights film festival here in Tallinn, where I had the chance to see "Sleepless Nights". First of all I was very eager to see it. As yesterday I talked to one of the actors - Khaled Abol Naga, playing Ali, he convinced me that its controversial and is a good example of new Egyptian cinema generation. The opening titles were OK, the first 10 minutes also, but what happened later, well, not my cup of tea. The first half of the movie seemed to me like an Mexican soap opera - the dialogues, acting and locations (mostly inside). The only good part there was Khaled playing Ali and that's it. The second part of the film changed the atmosphere...mainly because the guys went to the beach house. Still, all the time I could see through the characters and mostly I recognized actors trying to struggle.

When talking about the script itself, well, it was too long and with many "cheesy" elements, especially the ending...

The only good thing were some interesting camera shots.

The controversy...well, maybe for the Arab world. And respect for that! I don't know their culture very good, so I suppose they conceder this (braking up couples) controversial.

After the movie Khaled Abol Naga said that in Egypt they censor most of the movies. That means no sex, religion and so on. This could be a very good explanation why maybe in Europe and rest of the western world, this movie is nothing special.