Omar Sharif's final film before ascending to Hollywood stardom with Lawrence of Arabia is an adaptation from a novel by Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. The Beginning and the End was the first film adapted from Mahfouz's opus; his novels would later usher in some of the most significant films in Arab cinema's history. Directed by Salah Abouseif - one of Egypt's significant realist filmmakers - the film charts the life of a modest Egyptian family after their patriarch's death. Stricken by poverty, the family's lives unfold into dramatically different paths. In the end, the tension between pride, shame, and blind ambition seems to lead only to tragedy.