The Innocent (Arabic البرئ, pronounced: Alparee') is an Egyptian feature film, released on 15 August 1986, starring Ahmed Zaki, Gamil Ratib, and Mahmoud Abdel Aziz.
In 2005, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny, in a rare move for the censorship-heavy region, agreed to show the movie uncut for the first time, 19 years after its production and release with heavy edits (including the removal of the controversial ending) demanded by the Ministers of Interior (Ahmed Rushdi), Defense (Abd Al-Halim Abu-Ghazala), and Culture (Ahmed Abdel Maqsoud Heikal) at the time.
Both the songs in the film are sung and composed by Ammar El Sherei and feature lyrics by the poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi.
In the final scene, censored in Egypt, Ahmed opens fire indiscriminately on officers and fellow soldiers until he is shot as a new truck filled with rioting students arrives.
To him the nation is a simple concept, his sole homeland and country being his field and the canal in which he cools from the heat, while his enemies are those he can see, and his only entertainment is the grocer where the village youth gather to chatter and mock the gullible (including him).
The prison warden is Colonel Tawfiq Sharkas (Mahmoud Abdel Aziz), an officer who lives a double life as a kind gentleman to his loved ones and a brutal torturer to his charges.
The naïve, simple Ahmed objects to the army feeding the prisoners and guards them avidly, working to quash any escape attempts while callous to the ill treatment he witnesses.
As vehicles carry more prisoners in, he raises the machine gun and screams, the end for viewers at the time of release but followed in the director’s cut by him shooting at his superiors (one of whom returns fire killing him) as well as detainees knocking on the doors of the trucks demanding freedom.
Actor Ahmed Zaki insisted that Mahmoud Abdel Aziz throw real poisonous snakes on him in the prison cell to trigger fears by way of method acting.