Mohamed Ramadan’s latest film could be his biggest yet.Asad, the story of an enslaved man whose love for a woman from a rival tribe sparks a revolution, will test the regional box office's appetite for large-scale historical dramas. It will also test Ramadan’s cinema appeal after seven years away from the big screen, a period during which he focused largely on his music career and hit Ramadan TV series.Asad director Mohamed Diab recently told The National Ramadan was so committed to the script that he partly financed reshoots of the film to ensure it arrived in the best shape possible.▶“Everyone warned me that he’s a big diva,” Diab said. “But he was completely committed to this film. Two years working together, absolute commitment.”This suggests Ramadan is serious about returning to cinema, with Asad also likely to benefit from the larger audience he has built through his growing music career.It is also a chance to add another entry to a growing catalogue of star roles in which he often plays a driven man on a mission.Below are 10 films that trace his screen career across nearly two decades.1. Ramy Al Etsamy (2008)▶Ramadan was still early in his acting career when he landed his first film role in this politically tinged comedy starring Ahmed Eid.As Shalaby, a poor security officer, he has brief but impactful screen time. Ramadan recalled the role with pride in a 2016 interview with FilFan, saying Shalaby was “killed during the dispersal of the sit-in, and his body is wrapped in the Egyptian flag”.2. Ehky Ya Sharhazad (2009)▶Ramadan carved out a slightly bigger supporting role in the socially fuelled drama Ehky Ya Sharhazad, starring Mona Zaki and Mahmoud Hemida.As Saeed El Khafeef, a young man involved in one of the Egyptian women’s stories portrayed in the film, Ramadan’s sensitive and almost shy role was far removed from the action-bound persona he would later take on. Indeed, this is what director Yousry Nasrallah wanted when he cast Ramadan instead of Bassem Samra. “I needed someone skinny, and physically weaker than the girls,” he said on the television show Casting.3. Cairo Exit (2010)▶The steady roles eventually paid off when Ramadan landed his first starring role in the powerful Cairo Exit.He played Tarek, a young Muslim man in Cairo in love with Amal, a Coptic Christian woman agonising over whether to move away from Egypt for a better future abroad. More than the talking point of an interfaith relationship, the film by writer-director Hesham Issawi also traced how these pressures were part of a tumultuous Egyptian society facing high unemployment and class barriers in the run-up to the 2011 Arab Spring.4. El Almany (2012)▶This can probably be looked back on as one of Ramadan’s first star vehicles, with El Almany being an early incarnation of the high-octane action films that would define his career.Ramadan plays the title role, an ambitious street enforcer trying to work his way up the local crime syndicate through a series of brazen escapades.In a Cairo news conference promoting Asad this week, Ramadan referred to the role’s impact on his public profile, and his decision in later years to resist the same roles throughout his career: “It would have been easy to present the same type again, but I preferred to do different experiments,” he said.5. Abdo Mota (2012)▶Abdo Mota was Ramadan in full brawn, in what is basically a revenge film.He played Abdo, a young man drawn into the underworld after the death of his parents, where he goes on to dispense plenty of street justice.The film caused controversy, perhaps because it was so popular, with accusations that it glamorised violence. Ramadan would not go on to disown the film, but said it reflected the stage he was in at the time as an actor trying to cement himself as a leading man.“I made Abdo Mota when I was 24,” Ramadan said on the talk show Ma’akum in 2023. “If it were offered to me again, it would be impossible for me to do it in the same violent form.”6. Qalb El-Assad (2013)▶It took a while for Ramadan to fully expand into more rounded roles that didn’t rely only on action sequences, but Qalb El-Assad was a more nuanced attempt.He played Fares, a young man kidnapped as a child and raised in the back rooms of a circus before criminal gangs recruit him due to his special set of skills.Ramadan rejected comparisons with his earlier roles. “The role is completely different,” he told FilFan. “My character in Qalb El-Assad revolves around a character who is cleaner, not like my previous roles.”7. Shadd Agzaa (2015)▶Shadd Agzaa provided a slight but effective pivot for Ramadan. This time, he was on the other side of the law, playing hard-boiled police officer Omar Al Mukhtar, who tests the limits of the law while hunting the gang responsible for killing his wife.“I consider Shadd Agzaa the hardest experience I have been through,” he told Al Masry Al Youm in 2015. “I also consider it the film I was looking for.”8. El Kenz (2017)▶Ramadan stretches out here by joining a large ensemble cast in Sherif Arafa’s historic adventure, which draws partly on popular Arab folk tales.Starring alongside Mohamed Saad, Hend SabryRambo-like, Ahmed Rizk, Ruby and Amina Khalil, he plays Ali Al Zeibaq, the wily folk hero of the film’s Mamluk-era strand, a Robin Hood-like figure caught up in political intrigue and a romance with Zainab, the daughter of his nemesis. 9. Jawab E’tiqal (2017)▶Don't let the Rambo-like trailer fool you, Jawab E’tiqal is perhaps one of the most underrated roles in Ramadan's career.He plays Khaled El Degwy, a member of an extremist organisation whose brother is killed by one of the group’s leaders. Khaled attempts to leave the group, only to find himself pursued by them, with security forces in tow.The role gives Ramadan a more conflicted figure than the street heroes and revenge-driven men that had shaped much of his film career.In a way, Jawab E'tiqal has Ramadan trying to merge both sides of his film and TV work. In film, he had often been the conquering hero, while on the small screen he was more often the man of the people ground down by society. The critics and film public were lukewarm, but it was a commendable effort to step, ever so slightly, out of his comfort zone.10. Harley (2023)▶After years focusing on TV dramas, Harley brought Ramadan back to the big screen with the kind of trademark action picture that proved irresistible at the box office.This time he played mechanical engineer Mohamed Hashem, known as Harley, who, after returning from the Gulf, finds himself recruited by a biker gang planning a diamond heist.“Harley is the name of the character I play,” Ramadan told El Watan. “He is someone who loves motorbikes very much. He is fast in everything in his life: his reactions, his decisions and his emotions.”