CAIRO: Egypt’s Youssef Chahine, Arab cinema’s most celebrated director, was flown to a hospital in Paris on an emergency flight yesterday after falling into a coma following a brain hemorrhage. Chahine, accompanied by his niece Marianne Khoury, flew out of Cairo on a specially chartered medical flight to France, said Khaled Yussef, who co-directed Chahine’s latest film “Chaos” in 2007.

He was to be treated at the American Hospital at Neuilly, outside Paris, an airport official said, after his plane makes a brief stopover in Athens to refuel.

The 82-year-old “is in a coma following a cerebral hemorrhage,” Mohammed Abdel Daher of Ash-Shuruq hospital in Cairo told Egypt’s MENA news agency on Sunday, adding that Chahine was in a “serious” condition.

Chahine won official plaudits for his pioneering role in Egypt’s film industry and was awarded the Cannes film festival’s 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997. But he has never shied away from controversy during a long career, criticizing US foreign policy as well as Egypt and the Arab world.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that his country would pay for his treatment in “consideration of his involvement in the construction of Egyptian cinema,” MENA reported.

Chahine made his first film in Egypt in 1950 and it was he who discovered and launched the career of renowned actor Omar Sharif, who shot to stardom with “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago.” He claimed Cairo stopped subsidizing his films after his 1973 cult movie “Al-Asfur” (“The Bird”) which attributed the Arab defeat in the 1967 war against Israel to the corruption of the political classes at the time. He also made three highly acclaimed films in the late 1990s — “Al-Muhajer” (“The Emigrant”), “Al-Masir” (“Destiny”) and “Al-Akhar” (“The Other”). Despite his often-abrasive tone, Egyptian authorities hailed Chahine’s contribution to the nation’s cinema and his “daring” representation of its society. His last film, “Chaos,” was typical of the man who sought to uphold the rights of the oppressed, depicting a popular uprising in a Cairo district against a corrupt police officer and his abusive subordinates.

Born in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on Jan. 25, 1926, Chahine received a French schooling and studied briefly at university there before moving to the United States to study theater. His happy memories of his time in the United States were in contrast to his later “fury” at Washington’s policies against the Arab world, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “I am still very attached to my professors who taught me film-making 60 years ago in California,” he said in a 2003 interview. “I fell in love there during that time... but (now) there is also the fury I feel against American politics.”

“He is a legend,” said Egyptian actress Yousra Selim, who played in several of Chahine’s films. “There will not be another one like him, in Arab or world cinema.” I cannot say enough about his creativity, but I can say after working with him on five films that he creates a family relationship between everyone on the set and in the office.”