Running close to three hours, this 2022 Egyptian production sets a historical action drama in the Egypt of 1919, the year a nationwide uprising reshaped the country's relationship with the British administration then in control. Marwan Hamed directs.
What is Kira & El Gen about?
The story follows the two men named in the title, whose separate lives are pulled together as unrest spreads through Egyptian streets and towns. Scattered public anger hardens into organised resistance, and both figures move out of ordinary routine and into clandestine work carried out in workshops, alleyways and back rooms. As much attention goes to the mechanics of that effort as to the confrontations themselves: how messages travel, how neighbours choose sides, how the authorities answer. Across a long running time the narrative keeps returning to what those choices cost the people making them. The political situation of the period supplies the frame the action moves through rather than a case argued on screen.
About the cast
Karim Abdel Aziz and Ahmed Ezz head the cast, appearing alongside Hend Sabry, Ahmed Malek and Sayed Ragab. Sam Hazeldine, Razane Jammal and Huda ElMufti complete the principal ensemble. Marwan Hamed directs. The scale of the production is visible in its crowd sequences and its period reconstruction, sustained across a 175-minute cut.
Context & significance
The film belongs to a strand of large-scale Arabic-language cinema that draws on modern Egyptian history for mainstream entertainment, pairing set-piece action with a carefully dressed period setting. The events of 1919 are a fixed reference point in Egyptian historical memory, and here they supply the conditions the characters live under: the occupation of the time, the protests it drew, and the response to them. By genre the title sits between action and drama, with history providing structure rather than a documentary treatment. Anyone arriving at Egyptian cinema for the first time will find a long, densely populated story that establishes its world at length before the pace tightens.
Watching Kira & El Gen on Ktime
Kira & El Gen streams on K-Time with a Persian dub, so viewers who prefer to watch in Farsi can follow it without reading subtitles. This page is open to read without an account; starting playback requires signing in with a free K-Time account. The K-Time interface is built in Farsi throughout for viewers across the Iranian diaspora.