Friday Films: ‘The Sixth Day,’ Based on a Novel by Andrée Chedid


This week’s film is The Sixth Day (1986), directed by Youssef Chahine, an adaptation of a novel written in French by the Lebanese author Andrée Chedid. The novel (Le Sixieme Jour) has been translated into English as The Sixth Day by Isobel Stracey.

The film’s set in a working-class Cairo neighborhood in 1947, during the cholera epidemic. Sadika is caring for her bedridden husband and cholera-stricken grandson. The “sixth day” is because it is said that a victim of cholera dies or recovers on the sixth day. Sadika finds a sort of love with a street performer.

It stars Dalida, Mohsen Mohieddin, Mohamed Mounir, and Chahine himself makes an appearance.

Notably, this is the first of our Friday films based on a book written by a woman.

Previous Friday films:


Al-Harambased on a novel by Yusuf Idris

I’m Free, based on a novel by Ihsan Abdel Quddous


For Bread Alone, based on the novel by Mohamed Choukri

Gate of the Sun, based on the novel by Elias Khoury

The Dupesbased on Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun


Adrift on the Nile, based on a novel by Naguib Mahfouz

A Nightingale’s Prayerbased on a novel by Taha Hussein.






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