With the rapid appearance and disappearance of Egyptian films in cinemas inside Egypt and especially abroad, producers must ask themselves: Where have the days gone when Egyptian films dominated the Arab markets, with screenings lasting not just two or three weeks, but two or three months or more? They must responsibly consider whether there is another path to secure their trade without blindly copying Hollywood and Bollywood in stories that are extremely strange and alienate from lived reality. They should also think about the production system that keeps revolving like a cracked record, and that adopting serious topics does not mean stopping profits but returning to the golden era when highly successful films were made by directors who knew exactly how to craft movies that attracted multiples of today’s audiences to cinemas.

I must admit that the answer to all this is that “the audience wants this” and there is indeed an audience for action and comedy films mixed with dance and singing, but its size does not match the audience of films by Hassan El-Imam, Niazi Mostafa, Hussein Kamal, and Salah Abu Seif previously. Their films were either commercial with thought or commercial without thought, but in both cases attracted millions of people across almost all Arab capitals. What is wrong with that? The reality is that the goose no longer lays gold but tin, and the time has come to return to the roots, with diversity in topics (or “merchandise” as market people say), and a big plan to develop what used to be the second or third national revenue source in those days.