Ya mahalabia ya is a complex satirical comedy, with political undertones, about film-making at the time of British domination under their puppet King Farouk. A film within a film. Sherif Arafa mocks everything, even the Egyptian style of filming in the fifties.In the film which we see being made, a night-club owner hatches a plot to remove the king and to murder the British. Gangsters pretend to carry out her orders, but they fool her. When she finds out, she has them arrested and sent to fight the 1948 war, which could easily be ‘replaced’ by the Six-Day War in 1967. With inferior arms, the men have to fight Israelis and British.The making of this film which is really about the rebellion preceding the 1952 revolution was repeatedly disrupted by bureaucrats demanding bribes and to see licences. Mahalabia, from the title, means literally ‘dish which is easy to prepare’, but also ‘a beautiful woman’ and ‘a situation of confusion and inconsistency’ this latter indicating that the events in the film shift back and forth in time and space (between the forties and the present day).Sherif Arafa is an up-and-coming talent. His film Playing with Adults was the box-office hit of 1991. Ya mahalabia ya won the audience prize at the Morocco Film Festival in March 1992. Terrorism and Kebab, also being screened in Rotterdam, was the big hit of 1992. The stunningly-beautiful actress who plays the lead, Laila Eloui, also produced the film.
