“Straddles the line between reverence and inquiry.”

What a formidable challenge it is for Marwan Hamed to take on a biopic of what may well be Egypt’s most famous figure across all eras and cultural domains combined. Umm Kalthoum is not simply a legendary singer; she is a national constant, a voice that has remained steady across political turmoil, social transformations, and generational shifts. Translating such a figure to the screen is not merely a matter of cinematic craft, but one of ideology and responsibility. Her life has long existed at the intersection of documented history and embellished legend. Stories about her love life, her relationships with power, her artistic authority, and her private contradictions have circulated for decades, often less as verifiable truth than as folklore attached to a figure too vast to fully grasp.

Attempts to render Umm Kalthoum in audiovisual form have been numerous, yet only one has truly been embraced by audiences across the Arab world: the landmark television series directed by Enam Mohamed Ali. Hugely successful at the time of its release, the series nevertheless leaned heavily into reverence. Its portrait bordered on hagiography. Umm Kalthoum appeared saintly, composed, untouchable, even within her own home and among her family. She was framed almost exclusively through the gaze of others, perpetually observed, rarely intimate. The result was an image that inspired awe but discouraged proximity. One could not help but wonder how a human being could exist so entirely as a symbol, and whether such distance was truthful or simply comforting.

It is precisely this unresolved tension between the woman and the monument that continues to attract ambitious Egyptian filmmakers. The desire to make a feature film about Umm Kalthoum remains potent, perhaps inevitable, for any director seeking to grapple with legacy, power, and national memory. Marwan Hamed’s decision to take on El Sett feels both daring and logical. The son of the late Wahid Hamed, one of Egypt’s most influential screenwriters, Marwan announced himself forcefully with The Yacoubian Building, one of the most expensive, discussed, and commercially successful films in Egyptian cinema history. His debut demonstrated an impressive command over large-scale production, sensitive subject matter, and ensemble storytelling, all while extracting some of the strongest performances of his cast’s careers. It positioned him as a filmmaker capable of colossal ambition.

Anticipation surrounding El Sett was immense, and it only intensified with the announcement that Mona Zaki would portray Umm Kalthoum. The casting immediately polarized public opinion. Zaki, one of the most respected actresses of her generation, has achieved something rare in Egyptian cinema: sustained relevance and credibility across both television and film. In an industry that remains particularly unforgiving to women, especially as they age, her longevity is an achievement in itself. Yet her physicality and screen presence are far removed from Umm Kalthoum’s monumental aura. The controversy was exacerbated by memories of Zaki’s earlier attempt to portray another Egyptian icon, Soad Hosny, in a television series that was met with harsh criticism. The stakes here were enormous. This was not merely a role; it was a cultural test.

Hamed’s approach becomes clear from the beginning. El Sett revisits major moments from Umm Kalthoum’s life, anchoring them within a familiar biopic structure while attempting to inject emotional immediacy. The film opens at a symbolic peak: a sold-out concert at the Olympia in Paris, an event remembered both for its prestige and for the shocking moment when Umm Kalthoum was attacked on stage by an overzealous fan. From this collision of triumph and vulnerability, the narrative retreats into memory. Her childhood unfolds through hardship and survival. Her father dresses her as a boy so she can sing religious texts at weddings and celebrations where necessity masquerades as devotion. From an early age, she is burdened with responsibility and destined to support not only herself but her entire family. The relationship with her father becomes one of the film’s strongest narrative anchors. It is marked by authority, discipline, and gradual negotiation since his control is suffocating yet formative. When the family leaves the village and professional success begins to take shape, Umm Kalthoum’s personality crystallizes. She is strict, deeply driven, and unwilling to be perceived as weak or dependent. This portrayal aligns closely with the public image that has persisted for decades, an image of absolute command and self-possession that survived long after her passing.

At the same time, El Sett is deeply invested in her emotional and romantic life. From her foundational relationships with her father and brother to her romantic encounters, the film repeatedly returns to longing as its emotional motor. The recurring line, “The night, its sky, its stars, and its moon,” drawn from “Alf Leila wa Leila,” functions as a poetic refrain for desire. Music becomes both narrative glue and emotional shorthand, reminding the viewer of how profoundly Umm Kalthoum’s songs articulated love, waiting, and ache for millions across generations. Some omissions are understandable. A 160-minute runtime still cannot contain a career of such magnitude. Certain legendary songs are absent, sacrificed to time. Yet the pieces that do appear are used with remarkable precision. The inclusion of “Ana Fi Intizarak” and “Al Atlal” lands with overwhelming power. These moments stand among the film’s emotional peaks as reminders of Umm Kalthoum’s singular ability to transform private emotion into collective catharsis.

What proves far more difficult to overlook is the film’s limited engagement with her artistic process. Umm Kalthoum was famously meticulous, deeply involved in every detail of her work. She delayed songs over a single instrument, argued fiercely with composers and lyricists, and exerted near-total control over arrangements and performance. This artistic interiority, the engine of her legend, is only lightly sketched here. Given her collaborations with some of the greatest musical minds in Arab history, this absence feels glaring. One cannot help but question why the film devotes so much attention to speculative personal relationships while sidelining the labor, discipline, and obsession that forged her legacy. Some may argue that focusing on the woman rather than the artist is a deliberate corrective to decades of mythologization. Yet the imbalance feels less like subversion and more like a missed opportunity. El Sett needed to confront her artistic rigor head-on. Without it, the portrait remains emotionally rich but intellectually restrained.

Still, El Sett is anything but timid. It moves with confidence across its expansive runtime, and Hamed clearly relishes the opportunity to work at scale. The production design is lush and deliberate, revealing a love for grandeur without tipping into empty excess. The set pieces are frequently spectacular, but they are not merely decorative. The Queen Nazli sequence, in particular, stands out not only for its visual splendor but for its narrative cruelty. It is here that the royal family fully enters the picture, framing the doomed love story between Umm Kalthoum and King Farouk’s uncle, while Nazli, the Queen Mother, asserts her authority with chilling composure. After requesting a private meeting with Umm Kalthoum, Nazli personally ends the relationship. What follows is one of the film’s most devastating conceits: Umm Kalthoum learns of the breakup moments before taking the stage, only to perform in a room where the woman who orchestrated her heartbreak sits in silent authority. It is a moment that crystallizes the film’s interest in power, sacrifice, and performance, forcing Umm Kalthoum to sublimate private devastation into public excellence.

Elsewhere, the film’s formal intelligence is perhaps most evident in its opening moments, underscored by shiver-inducing electric guitar strings. This choice is far from arbitrary. It functions as a knowing nod to Umm Kalthoum’s famously scorching debates with Mohamed Abdel Wahab over the introduction of the electric guitar into her music, a controversy that once symbolized the tension between tradition and modernity in Arab song. By incorporating this sound into the score, composer Hesham Nazih performs a subtle act of historical dialogue, transforming a past artistic conflict into a contemporary cinematic language, resulting in a pulsating score that amplifies the film’s emotional charge while quietly honoring Umm Kalthoum’s legacy of artistic evolution and defiance.

Ultimately, El Sett remains a film that straddles the line between reverence and inquiry. It succeeds in humanizing the icon emotionally, particularly in moments where power and performance collide, yet it hesitates to fully interrogate the labor and artistic rigor that made her immortal. What remains is a richly mounted, often moving, and occasionally frustrating portrait of a woman who was never meant to be easily captured. Perhaps that very impossibility is the film’s most honest truth.