Sadat (miniseries) Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced a ban on all films distributed by Columbia Pictures, and Egypt's artists' and film unions sued Columbia Pictures and the film's director, writer, and producers. The lawsuit was dismissed by an Egyptian court for lack of jurisdiction because the film's "distortions" and "slanders" occurred outside Egypt. Sadat (miniseries) Sadat is a 1983 American two-part, four-hour made-for-television biographical film based on the life and death of the late 3rd President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat starring Louis Gossett Jr. as Sadat and Madolyn Smith as Sadat's wife, Jehan. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures Television through Operation
Assassination of Anwar Sadat members, but also the Coptic Pope and other Coptic clergy, intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes. All non-government press was banned as well. The round up missed a Jihad cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, who would succeed in assassinating Anwar Sadat that October. According to Tala'at Qasim, ex-head of the Gama'a Islamiyya interviewed in "Middle East Report", it was not Islamic Jihad but his organization, known in English as the "Islamic Group", that organized the assassination and recruited the assassin (Islambouli). Members of the Group's "Majlis el-Shura" ("Consultative Council")—headed by the famed "blind shaykh"—were arrested