One of Chahine's most enduring classics, The Land details the struggle of a group of peasant farmers in the 1930s to protect their fields and their livelihood against a corrupt pasha interested only in self-aggrandizement. Adapted by Chahine from a novel published shortly after the abolition of the monarchy by Egypt's 1952 revolution, The Land offers a full-blooded narrative of political struggle and sweeping nationalist emotions and is a rallying cry for an Arab world demoralized by Israeli expansion in the late 1960s.