A Woman's Youth (1956) poster
1956 · realism · desire · melodrama

A Woman's Youth

Directed by Salah Abu Seif2h 0m1956
  • sombre
  • intense

A rural mother sells her only cow in order to enroll her son, an imam (Shukri Sarhan) at Dar al-Uloom College. When an imam arrives in Cairo, he rents a room in the Citadel area from a domineering woman named Shafa'at (Tahiya Karioka) who is fascinated by his youth and vitality and lures him into practicing vice with her. As a result, he stumbles in his studies and health. At this time, a girl whom she and her father knew from a young age helps him to get rid of all the corruption in which he lives, and her father advises him to stay away from intercessions, but the intercessions plots against him in an attempt to stay with her.

Our read · A Woman's Youth (1956) reads as a sombre, steady, grounded realism · desire · melodrama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Cast
ShadiaTahiya CarioccaShoukry SarhanAbdel Warith AssirSerag Mounir
Where to watch

No streaming listing for Latvia right now — try the search links below.

More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of A Woman's Youth

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Geometric closeness in the twelve-axis space — pure DNA distance, not “people also liked.” Distance numbers are listed under each title for sceners who like to know the maths.

Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

⌘↵ to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself