By Ibrahim Shehata

Antonello Altamura is not only the emerging genius of the thriller genre, but also the inventor of a new cinematic language.
Everyone, especially young people, can’t wait to see Altamura’s latest film at film festivals and in theaters: “Ancient Taste of Death: The Sinister Legend of Wardal ” a perfect combination of the Egypt of Cleopatra VII and Hollywood.
Altamura shows an image, a sequence that seems distant from the next, but which gradually becomes part of a perfect fabric that captures the enigmas and mystery of the Egypt of Cleopatra VII and Hollywood.

And the tension builds and the audience is captivated by a narrative where the unpredictability of the main characters makes the viewers’ breath become the film.

The synopsis is this: Wardal, a movie star and descendant of Cleopatra VII, lives in a Hollywood mansion with his assistant Jacques, an attractive stuntman.
Wardal and Jacques are in a terrible car accident on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Wardal emerges unscathed, but Jacques’s face is disfigured.
The media doesn’t believe the accident was a coincidence.
Jacques dons a mask to cover his disfigured face and continues to live with Wardal in his Hollywood mansion.
An attractive journalist and movie director, Octavio, has always been interested in Wardal’s mysterious and captivating character and penetrates the star’s life through Wardal’s corruptible manager, Mr. William.
Margò, partner of Octavio, a character masterfully played by the French and Indian cinema icon Marianne Borgo, has a sinister premonition and tries in vain to stop her beloved Octavio from immersing himself in Wardal’s world.
Octavio is totally magnetized by the figure and person of Wardal, who is also a powerful psychic.
In Wardal, two personalities coexist: that of Wardal one, a star obsessed with fame, and that of Wardal two, a descendant of Cleopatra VII, invaded by the desire to avenge his ancestress, and sees in Octavio the reincarnation of Octavian, Cleopatra’s enemy, and decides to kill him.
The case of Wardal and Jacques’ car accident explodes in the Hollywood press. Wardal escapes from American journalists and runs to Egypt.
He goes to Siwa, the oracle of Cleopatra VII, and disobeys the chief priest of the Oracle, played splendidly by the famous Wael ElOuny, who dissuades him from killing Octavio. Wardal secretly returns to Hollywood where he assassinates Octavio, completely under his power, and drags the corpse into the basement of the villa, similar to the maze of burial rooms in the Egyptian pyramids, where Wardal performs his theatrical rituals, which, by definition, all have a sacrificial matrix.
Wardal invites Jacques to take a short vacation and to stay away from the basement of the villa, inventing that he has spread rat poison there.
Wardal mummifies Octavio’s corpse.
Jacques, disobeying Wardal, descends into the basement of the villa.
He discovers everything and sets fire to everything, fire, the element that had disfigured his face.

Nothing in this story happens by chance and seems driven by an inexorable destiny. Altamura, since seven years ago, had begun to be strongly interested in the character of Count Federico di Wardal, a person and artist with an intense magnetic personality and a biography that involves the story, Hollywood Golden Age, in short, which goes beyond all imagination and perceives fatal connections between Wardal and his inner world.
Altamura approaches Wardal and makes his first cinematographic work about him, a short, entitled “Delirium Wardal” https://youtu.be/dq16W_aWRBA?si=dD5jUcCP-6uJmvZg, with a plot of rare dramatic power.
The news of Dalida’s suicide is transferred thirty years after its actual occurrence and is learned by Wardal, who is in a recording studio, to sing , in homage to his friend Dalida, the song “Bang Bang” by Sonny Bono.
Wardal, via iPad, speaks with someone who not only informs him of Dalida’s suicide, but, at the same time, informs him that his second love, out of fear of loving, suddenly leaves him: two daggers in the heart.
Wardal, with a passionate temperament, inevitably experiences all this in a poignant delirium.
Altamura absorbs the drama with enormous significance and turns it into an unrepeatable masterpiece in harmony with the musical creation of Antonio Verrico. Altamura proceeds with the feature film: “Big Mother”, exploring himself and then, after more than five years of preparation in his very special artistic world, he shoots and finishes “Ancient Taste of Death”.
Altamura, having risen to the top of the news, is preparing to consolidate his

position as an icon of contemporary cinema.