LACMA’s new exhibition explores Youssef Nabil’s “I Saved My Belly Dancer,” starring Tahar Rahim and Salma Hayek. (photo © Youssef Nabil, courtesy of the artist)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents “Now Showing: Youssef Nabil’s I Saved My Belly Dancer” from Aug. 24 through Jan. 11, marking the first public presentation of the film since it entered the museum’s collection in 2025.

The exhibition is centered around Nabil’s film “I Saved My Belly Dancer” (2015), which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Tahar Rahim, who resembles Nabil, embodies the artist’s alter ego, while Salma Hayek stars as the belly dancer. For Nabil, the dancer represents both a remembered and an imagined memory of Cairo.

“I wanted to talk about belly dancing as an art form that is probably unique to [Egypt]. It’s our dance. I’ve always loved it. So, I wanted to talk about saving the idea of belly dancing in my memory, more than anything,” he said.

The exhibition is curated by Linda Komaroff, curator and department head of Art of the Middle East at LACMA. The installation intends to evoke the type of mid-20th century movie theater, including retro seats, contemporaneous with Egyptian films that inspired works in the exhibition. The space contains vintage movie posters and a photographic portrait of the director, hand-colored by Nabil’s mentor Van Leo. Additionally, the exhibition features photographs, based on the film, created by Nabil’s signature practice of hand-painting on silver gelatin prints rendered dreamlike by the unearthly intensity and tonality of the color palette. It is a revival of a mid-20th century technique associated with such Cairo-based photographers as Van Leo (Levon Alexander Boyadjian, 1921-2002).

The presentation continues LACMA’s history of exploring how film and popular culture interrelate with traditional areas of art from all periods and cultures. LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Blvd. For information, visit lacma.org.