Attiyat Al-Abnudi

Ateyyat El Abnoudy (November 26, 1939 – October 5, 2018), also known as Ateyyat Awad Mahmoud Khalil, was an Egyptian journalist, lawyer, actress, producer, and movie director. She was born in a small village along the Nile Delta in Egypt. El Abnoudy was considered to be one of the pioneering Arab female movie directors as her films inspired the works of many Arab women in the industry. She has been called the "poor people's filmmaker" due to the subject matter that inspired her to make films, including civil rights issues and the condition of impoverished Arabs.

El Abnoudy has received more than 30 international awards for her 22 films, including three for Horse of Mud, released in 1971. She was born to a family of labourers, coming from a line of spice and textile merchants along the Nile. She was the sixth born of seven children, having four sisters and three brothers, and became the only girl in her family to finish school. El Abnoudy moved to Cairo for work and educational opportunities, and later attended the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema for two years, with the majority of her learning focused on film theory.

El Abnoudy's films are known for dealing with political, social, and economic issues in Egypt. They challenged the censored state of film during Egypt's Sadat era. El Abnoudy faced censorship and criticism from the Egyptian state and press for depicting poverty and struggle in her films. The censorship board sought to cut scenes out of her short films that were unflattering to Egyptian society, such as images of children with dirt on their faces or malnourished animals. El Abnoudy received an Egyptian filmmakers first festival grand prize for her film Seas of Thirst at the 1985 edition of the Francophone Film Festival.

Her work received new interest during the 2011 Egyptian revolution and became further studied by Egyptian film archivists in Cairo. After her death, El Abnoudy’s films continued to be screened at film festivals around the world, particularly in programming dedicated to Arab women filmmakers. She has also noted the influence of the non-commercialized decolonial Third Cinema movement during her time at the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema. The topics of her documentaries were influenced by her working-class upbringing and her knowledge of law and social justice.

El Abnoudy focuses on non-fiction documentaries, with her work being categorized under the genre of direct cinema due to her stylistic choice to portray realist depictions of Egypt’s working class rather than provide commentary. Around 1990, El Abnoudy and Abdel-Rahman El Abnoudy divorced after over 20 years of marriage, and she continued to live in Cairo with her daughter and seven cats.

She would continue to create films into the 1990s and 2000s before passing away in 2018 at the age of 78.

Filmography

Awards and nominations 1971, three international prizes at the Grand Prix Film Festival, Mannheim Film Festiva l and Damascus Film Festival. 1972, French Critics Prize at Grenoble Film Festival. 1992, Egyptian Film Critics Prize, Ismailia International Documentary & Short Film Festival. 1998, Honoured, National Film Festival, Egyptian Ministry of Culture.