Media Portrayals of Anwar Sadat
In 1983, Sadat, a miniseries based on the life of Anwar Sadat, aired on US television with Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr. in the title role. The film was promptly banned by the Egyptian government, as were all other movies produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures, over allegations of historical inaccuracies. A civil lawsuit was brought by Egypt's artists' and film unions against Columbia Pictures and the film's directors, producers and scriptwriters before a court in Cairo, but was dismissed; the court held that "the distortions and the slanders found in the film took place outside the country", so that "the crimes were not within the Egyptian courts' jurisdiction."
Western authors attributed the film's poor reception to racism — Gossett being African American — in the Egyptian government or Egypt in general. Either way, one Western source wrote that Sadat's portrayal by Gossett "bothered race-conscious Egyptians and wouldn't have pleased Sadat." – The two-part series earned Gossett an Emmy nomination in the United States. The first Egyptian depiction of Sadat's life came in 2001, when Ayyam El Sadat (English: Days of Sadat) was released in Egyptian cinemas. This movie, by contrast, was a major success in Egypt, and was hailed as Ahmed Zaki's greatest performance to date.
The BBC also produced a film on Sadat called "Why Was Cairo Calm?". Film director and blogger Adam Curtis summarizes the documentary: "It tells the story of Sadat's presidency - and how the American TV networks created a fantasy vision of him as a wise democratic leader who had opened up the Egyptian economy to the free market, and was loved by his people for making peace for Israel. As the film shows - this was a complete illusion."
The young Sadat is a major character in Ken Follett's thriller "The Key to Rebecca", taking place in World War II Cairo. Sadat, at the time a young officer in the Egyptian Army and involved in anti-British revolutionary activities, is presented quite sympathetically; his willingness to cooperate with German spies is clearly shown to derive from his wish to find allies against British colonial domination of his country, rather than from support of Nazi ideology. Some of the scenes in the book, such as Sadat's arrest by the British, closely follow the information provided in Sadat's own autobiography.
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