How have your experiences growing up and working in Egypt influenced your approach to filmmaking? Are there any cultural elements that consistently inspire your creative process?

Making films in Egypt is very hard and difficult, growing up in such an environment with a passion for filmmaking is something very challenging with all these constraints. It’s so hard to compete in the commercial film’s scene and very hard also to find an alternative way of making parallel artistic and indie films. With also less opportunities of knowledge and cinema education in Egypt, we found it so hard to make good quality films and explore ourselves as filmmakers with our real and authentic voices.

The Egyptian society with all its complexities and the everyday barriers we have as filmmakers have been always an inspiring element in our storytelling craft. It’s out of these obstacles we can find innocent and authentic stories that narrate the real event of our lives in Egypt with all the laughter, cries and conflicts we face every day here in the society.

Winning the Palme d’Or for I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face was undoubtedly a milestone. Can you tell us about that experience and how it has shaped your career since then?

I began to be interested in Film Production and understanding the role of film producer in 2018, that was also the same moment when I worked on several projects and one of them was “I am afraid to forget your face” a short film directed by my friend Sameh Alaa. I befriended Sameh in 2012 and we always thought that we want to work together on a project, and that was my 1^st experience as a main producer on a short film directed by someone else not me. We didn’t know that we are going to win at all or even being selected in Cannes 2020, we thought we had a good script and honest intention towards the project so we can make it happen and then we decided to pick a deadline for the project which was the submission date of Festival de Cannes in 1^st of March 2020. After being selected we didn’t believe ourselves and after winning also we didn’t realize until maybe 2 years later. It must have been a dream that I need someone to wake me from and make me realize it’s true!

Before that I was so interested in understanding the real role of a film producer which was interesting to me in 2018 and specially 2019 when I was fundraising and developing Sameh’s film, I felt there is much beyond the title of film producer and there are so much to explore in that mysterious world, and after the award I gained the credibility and I started to teach and transfer the experience I had in producing that short and I believed that since we did it and it succeeded and we won, then why not doing it again and teach all the people around me how to do it and how to master producing indie films.

The Egyptian Film Producers Club is a remarkable initiative aimed at nurturing a new generation of film producers. What motivated you to start this project, and what impact do you hope it will have on Egypt’s film industry?

The motivation for EFPC or Egyptian Film Producers Club got ignited after what happened in Cannes and winning the award there, I felt overwhelmed by the number of film directors and filmmakers who wanted to collaborate and work on new short and feature films, and they want me to produce all the projects. I wanted to disappear and think about it and try to find a solution for that, and hence the idea of EFPC was born. I found too many film directors vs so little film producers as a proportion, and I decided to find a way to make this equilibrium. I tried to find a community where we can empower young & aspiring film producers to understand the real role of the film producer and be able to produce high quality films with the knowledge of what is production and how to master doing it regarding the development/financing/execution and distribution phases and to have a complete idea about their roles as film producers in all these phases during the filmmaking process.

The impact I’m looking for is to have an alternative way of making films, to have another generation of aspiring producers who can make different films and really enhance the quality and shape of Egyptian Cinema in the new future.

As a lecturer, how has teaching influenced your perspective on filmmaking and production? Does engaging with students inspire or challenge your creative work in any way?

Whenever I teach or give a lecture, I feel I’m repeating the words to myself too and they represent as a reminder to myself about what I’m doing and what is my role. Also understanding different mindsets of different students with a diversity of backgrounds help me to see different types of people and also it resonates with dealing in my creative work with different types of film directors. In general, teaching helps me to develop different approaches and methods of communication with different types of people that helps me in my professional career. People are not the same.

What is the most valuable lesson you aim to pass on to your students, particularly those aspiring to succeed in film production?

I want to them to have more persistence, the journey is so long and so difficult but having this kind ambition with persistence is very important for them to continue, they should be able every day to wake up and start working on their dreams. Life is too hard without believing in yourself and without also having the right people around to encourage you.

When serving on a jury, what are the key elements you focus on when evaluating films for recognition?

I believe deconstruing each film in the competition into the basic artistic elements is the way to easily can judge or recognize a film. For example, we can easily can judge directing, scriptwriting, cinematography, editing… and so on… I think this is the easiest way to judge the films and get a fair results but also having a general artistic idea about each film and discussing it with the jurors will be very beneficial because feedbacks from different people always raise some other thoughts that can’t be put into a scoring system.

In your view, how do film festivals and their juries contribute to the development and career progress of filmmakers?

In the beginning I believe film festivals are a very good exposure for each filmmaker who is participating in the film program, they select the film and the screening itself is a big chance for the filmmaker to attend and invite his friends and other filmmakers to come and enjoy watching the film program and the Q&A part in the end. It’s a great networking opportunity for the filmmaker to get to know more film professionals from the field and talk about his film and his new film projects he is working on in the future. The Jury also giving a recognition to a certain film whether it’s a special mention or an award is something very important to the filmmaker in his filmmaking journey and it pushes him many further steps to his future goals. I see awards are a great way to recognize a certain film and then expose its filmmaker to a further successful step that will help him into his future career.

Film O’Clock celebrates the universal connection through cinema. What does this concept mean to you personally?

I love the idea of screening the same films in different countries at the same time, it means that this festival can present as an open window to different audiences showing them the same films and they enjoy the experience simultaneously. An amazing connecting tool and method to have a very diverse kind of audience and this is also for me what Cinema is, to find the different audience who enjoy different language films and understand them and laugh and cry with every moment. Such an incredible power.