through his film Le Destin (1997) and the portrait of Averroès (ibn Rushd), a great judge, philosophsopher and advisor to Calife Al-Mansur, Egyptian director Youssef Chahine (1926-2008), speaks about Andalusia of the th century, and in particular the city of Córdoba, the capital of the Almohades and a place of clashes between Muslim extremists and savers concerned with the dissemination of knowledge. The use of the Middle Ages is a means for the director to ‘better understand the complexity of the present’.