In 2001, an exciting movie came to light, causing widespread controversy in the artistic community, revealing male and female artists who have had great weight so far.
Who among us does not remember the movie The Magician, which despite the passage of 19 years since it was shown, is still one of the signs in the cinema, and in it was the first appearance of the brilliant artist Minh Shalaby.
The artist embodied the role of the daughter of the magician Mansour Bahgat, played by Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, who decides to lock up his daughter at home for fear of mixing with the surrounding environment. Menna Shalaby performed several bold scenes in the film, which exposed her to widespread criticism.
During her interview on a personal drama program, Menna Shalaby said that she does not want to delete any scenes from her montage life. She added that the life of any person can turn into a dramatic work, describing the human journey in life from its beginning to the end with the feature film, noting that the late director Radwan Al-Kashef, who discovered her in the film The Magician, and the artist Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, whom she considers her godfather, who presented her to the cinema, It affected her greatly.
In another interview with the media, Issaad Younes, on the program Her Excellency, broadcast on CBC, she revealed new scenes for her second cinematic work, The Magician, which sparked widespread controversy because of her exaggerated audacity.
She said: “I did not know anything regarding cinema at the time or filming the movie, and I was very technically naive, and with time I had experience…and the director, Professor Radwan Al-Kashef, was the one who told me what to do.”
And she added: “Professor Radwan is the one who taught me everything, and I am very lazy, and I did not expect that I would know the best, and my mother was the one who told me that I am like.”
Menna Shalaby, the magician movie
And she continued, “My mother told me that she would be an actress, because I would not lie to her because the school is lonely, and she told me to do something that will benefit you instead of what you are doing to me all the time, and in the meantime, I met Professor Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, and he was looking for a girl who was making the magician movie.”
And she continued: “Professor Radwan taught me everything regarding the film, and said that I must act, and formed my formation as an actress in the film The Magician, and he was the one who made me an actress, and he was telling me what to do exactly, I did not know anything regarding the magician.”
Always in her appearance, Mena does not show any regrets regarding her role in the film, and considers that the only thing she regrets is her classification as a seductive actress, and she said that it is an honor for me to stand before the late director Radwan Al-Kashef.
In an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah, he said that her mother, the retired artist, was angry with her following she heard the criticism directed at her role in the film.
As for her ideal and closest friend to her heart, she says: “My teacher Radwan Al-Kashef, who is the only director who was able to direct a film that combines the commercial and artistic side at the same time, as in the movie (The Magician), although he only directed three works, and my closest friends They are Dalia Al-Buhairi, Hend Sabry and Ahmed Al-Sakka.”
The events of the film take place in one of the popular neighborhoods in Old Egypt, where “Mansour Bahgat” and his daughter live, and “Mansour Bahgat” a marginalized magician who lives among a group of marginalized people who live in crowded places and try to make their lives something joyful. To become the cause of people’s happiness and seek to bring joy into their souls