'The Stories': tumultuous history set to the sound of piano
'The Stories': tumultuous history set to the sound of piano newspress_en Thu, 10/01/2026 - 04:40 Culture & Social Affairs Gabriel García Márquez opened his memoir Living to Tell the Tale with the words: “Life is not what one lived , but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” The line serves as a fitting key to the world of The Stories , Egypt’s entry in the best…
In the 99th Academy Awards, Egypt's The Stories emerged as a contender in the best international feature film category. Directed by Abu Bakr Shawky, the film chronicles a tumultuous period in Egyptian history, from the 1967 war defeat, the 1977 Cairo bread riots to the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. The narrative is inspired by the true story of Shawky's parents' meeting, drawing from a family archive rather than history books.
The film peels back the layers of history at home and in the street, focusing on the marginal and ordinary. The story begins with the home of Ragheb, Fairouz, and their three sons, capturing dramatic and comic stories alive with spontaneity. Here, history is not narrated by the victors; instead, it's given to the marginal characters to tell their own version.
Shawky's third feature film, following Yomeddine and Hajjan, explores the intertwining of personal and political narratives. Family, music, football, war, and politics converge around the question of how a person can build a private life amidst historical intrusions. From personal anecdotes to political events, the film presents a collage of small stories that overlap, diverge, and converge.
The cinematography by Wolfgang Thaler provides a stark contrast to the film's narrative. While the camera captures the noisy, chaotic domestic life, it refrains from representing the wars directly. Instead, war seeps into the home through television and radio, arriving as absence and an empty chair. In this way, the film subtly portrays the omnipresence of war in everyday life.
The Stories masterfully uses the contrast between the piano and the television as visual metaphors. The piano symbolizes memory, playing slowly and deeply, while the television broadcasts a ceaseless stream of football matches, speeches, and patriotic songs, reflecting the intrusion of politics and culture into personal life. The editing mirrors the family's life, with rapid cuts and overlapping sounds, leaving the viewer immersed in the family's tumultuous existence.
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