Qinawi, a physically challenged peddler who makes his living selling newspapers in the central Cairo train station, is obsessed with Hanuma, an attractive young woman who sells drinks. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss' exploitative and abusive treatment.

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

Based on the novel by Latifa al-Zayyat, which explores a middle-class Egyptian girl's coming of age against the background of the growing Egyptian nationalist movement before the 1952 Egypt revolution.

An aristocratic family is torn down after the death of its patriarch. He leaves alone his widow wife and five of his daughters and sons. His eldest son, Ahmed (Shukry Sarhan), takes the role of the man in the house and helps his mother take care of his brother and sisters. Mamdouh (Ahmed Ramzy), his brother, is a self-centered man who refuses to follow his brother’s step and decides to make his own decisions in his life.