Sleepless (Arabic: لا أنام, translit. La Anam) is a 1957 Egyptian melodrama film. The film follows the intricate story of Nadia Lutfi, a daughter of divorced parents who suffers from Electra complex, which drives her to intervene in her father's relationships.
Directed by the Egyptian film director Salah Abu Seif, this film is based on a novel with the same name written by the Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Quddous. The film, which is currently ranked the 29th best Egyptian film by the cinema committee of the Supreme Council of Culture in Cairo, starred Faten Hamama, Yehia Chahine, Mariam Fakhr Eddine, Omar Sharif, Emad Hamdy, Hind Rostom and Rushdy Abaza. It was released on DVD as part of the Egyptian Cinema Classics film collection. Sleepless is one of the ten first Egyptian colored films.
Contents
Plot
Faten Hamama plays Nadia Lutfi, a young woman who belongs to an aristocratic, upper-class family. After her parents divorce each other, her father (Yehia Chahine) wins custody of her. She lives with her father and over the years develops a very close and strong relationship with him to the extent of being sexually attracted towards him, an obsessive behavior known as Electra complex.
At the age of 18, she plunges into a premature relationship with Mustafah (Imad Hamdi), a writer and journalist who is quite a bit older than she is. Meanwhile, her father meets and falls in love with another woman, Safia (Mariam Fakhr Eddine). He decides to marry her, which Nadia is forced to accept. However, her father gradually starts spending more time with his new wife, which galls and displeases Nadia who does not receive an equal amount of love and attention anymore. This compels and drives her to step in and ruin their relationship. Now seeing Safia as her enemy, Nadia plots for revenge from her stepmother. Nadia accuses Safia of having an affair with Aziz (Omar Sharif), Nadia's young uncle.