Egyptian actress Laila Elwi has been given a sudden three day vacation along with the entire cast of her upcoming television drama “Bint Min Shibra” due to the sudden deterioration of the director’s health. The director came down with an extremely high fever resulting from fatigue after having spent too many hours filming the scenes for the drama, reaching 24 hours nonstop at times.
In the new drama Laila plays the role of a young Italian lady named Maria, who was brought up in Shirbra neighborhood during the 40s. Maria meets a young Egyptian man and they fall in love, but her family refuses their union and they begin facing problems trying to make their relationship work.
The court of urgent matters in Abdeen, Cairo, has decided to not rule in the case against the makers of the movie “Baheb el Cima” (I Love the Cinema) starring Elwi, which was filed by 15 Coptic clergymen and 10 lawyers and advisors demanding the immediate stoppage of the movie.
The verdict stated that the court does not appose the case, but on the contrary they feel with the Coptic clergymen and everyone who filed the lawsuit, but stressed that they cannot rule in the case because it is not in their specialty. The judge stressed that the court of urgent matters does not normally accept cases that deal with such sensitive and deep issues as the one presented before them.
The lawyers representing the Coptic Christians revealed that he respects the court order, but will appeal to a higher court until he reaches a verdict to have the film stopped from screening.
The lawsuit was filed against Hani Fawzi the author and Hani Girges the producer in addition to the actors of the movie Laila Olwi, Mahmoud Hamida, Aidi Abdul Aziz and Manna Shalabi. Coptic priests in Egypt attacked the movie “Baheb al-sima”, which collected one million EGP in the first two weeks, starring Laila. Aziz Morkos, a Coptic priest, is one of the most enthusiastic critics for the movie said that this movie is giving a wrong idea about Coptic Egyptians and pictures them as radicals.
"The husband in the movie is orthodox and if he was strict and radical he won't have married his protestant wife. The movie presents the wife [Laila] as a loose wife who comes from a bad family and her sister is a bad girl who in one of the scenes was looking from the window at a church while flirting with a guy looking from one of the church's windows. The movie also shows the wife raping her husband because he did not want to have sex with her while he is fasting. The movie shows that most people have no idea about the holy books," Morkos uttered. –Albawaba.com
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
