New Works by Sara Shazli Topline Cairo Film Connection

Amer Shomali, a Palestinian doctormaker, has released new works (“The Wanted 18”), emerging Egyptian filmmaker Sara Shazli (“Back Home”) and first-time Jordanian director Amjad Al Rasheed are among the 16 projects selected for the 9th Cairo Film Connection, the Cairo Film Festival’s co-production platform.

The festival will present films from 10 nations, including five from the host country. It features 11 fiction and documentary feature in development and five in post-production.

This year’s edition received a record 135 submissions, according to incoming Cairo Film Connection manager Lynda Belkhiria, pointing toward a broader surge in production across North Africa and the Middle East. “There is a need, there is a demand,”She said. “There is something going on across the region.”

Many of the projects focus on women and their struggle to identify themselves with society and their families. Still others show characters — and filmmakers — grappling with the past, examining the intersection of the personal and the political, and offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a rapidly changing region.

The two completed narrative features looking to soon make a splash on the festival circuit include Jordanian helmer Amjad Al Rasheed’s buzzy feature debut “Inshallah a Boy,” which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival’s Final Cut program and is also taking part in the Marrakech Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops. The film tells the story of a mother and housewife who pretends to be pregnant after her husband’s sudden death in order to subvert the country’s patrilineal inheritance laws.

Another feature that will be presented to festival programmers and buyers in Cairo is “Red Path,”Lotfi Achour’s sophomore effort in Tunisia, the film tells the story of a young shepherd trying to heal from trauma following a terrorist attack.

The seven features in development include Sudanese-Russian filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani’s “Cotton Queen,” which is produced by Annemarie Jacir and Caroline Daube and won the ArteKino Award at the Cannes Film Festival’s L’Atelier this year. Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, the film follows teenage Nafisa as she begins to question cultural expectations and the collapsing cotton industry, under threat from pests — both insect and human.

The movie takes its title from a beauty pageant prize given to a girl working in the cotton industry during British colonial rule — a title the director seeks to reappropriate and subvert. “In this film, I transform the concept of the Cotton Queen into one that is more reflective of a Sudanese girl awakening to her sense of self, beyond beauty and marriage, to have a real impact on her community,”Mirghani. “The protagonist Nafisa is part of a new generation of Sudanese girls who exceed their predicted roles as apolitical wives and mothers.”

It is also possible to pitch. “Over Three Days,”Tamer Ashry, multihyphenate who made her 2017 debut “Photocopy”The film won a number of awards at the Arab film festival circuit. His sophomore feature, an off-beat comedy produced by Baho Bakhsh of Red Star, follows a woman who’s given a three-day ultimatum to decide if she wants to remain with her husband — until she discovers he’s already engaged to another woman, who he hopes will produce the child his wife couldn’t.

Ashry confessed that he saw himself in the script, as a man who’s “been shaped by this patriarchal society.” “The ideas and values implanted within me were ones which contributed to the struggle which Shireen faces, as well as my mother, sister and so many female figures in my life,”He said. He said after struggling with the feeling that he “didn’t have the willpower” to fight against that structure, that’s begun to change. “I want to be part of Shireen’s naïve humane revenge against these taboos which have caused enough emotional ailments needing a whole decade to heal,”He added.

One of the document projects being presented in Cairo is “Searching for Woody”(pictured, top), Shazli’s second feature. “Back Home,”It was focused on her relationship and responsibilities with her father. The film was mostly shot in her family home during this pandemic. Her second film follows the director as she moves into a small apartment in the Cairo suburbs in an effort to sever the umbilical cord from her mother — the filmmaker and producer Marianne Khoury, who was the niece and collaborator of late Egyptian screen legend Youssef Chahine.

The film, which is produced by Khoury, takes its title from the eponymous Ethiopian nanny who helped raise Shazli and follows the director’s efforts to find her after she left Egypt. “This is a story of my childhood in Cairo with my nanny Woody, but this is kind of an excuse to talk about my relationship with my mother, which is a complex relationship,” said Shazli.

The documentary is a combination of archival footage and a narration. “personal” “intimate”She added that she was sharing her story but also an exploration of motherhood. “This film is a way of burying the painful traumas of the past in order to move forward with your life.”

The latest work from Shomali, multi-disciplinary Palestinian artist and award-winning animator, is also anticipated “The Wanted 18”Toronto premiered the film. “Theft of Fire”The alleged illegal excavation of antiquities from Palestinians by Moshe Dayan, an Israeli politician and military leader, is explored in this hybrid film project. This action-packed, animated heist thriller examines the loss.

The film, which is a coproduction between Rashid Abdelhamid from Made in Palestine Project (Made in Palestine Project) and Ina Fischer of Montreal-based Intuitive Pictures (Made in Palestine Project), was released on September 16, 2008.“The Wanted 18”), will use archival materials, re-enactments, and interviews (both real and CGI deep fakes).

“It is a historical documentary, but about a story that didn’t happen. The story is not real,”The director said VarietyLast year. “We’re going to have interviews with Moshe Dayan and [late Israeli politician and peace activist] Uri Avnery, with Palestinians inside the prison, but the overall story of the heist itself didn’t happen. But we’re going to edit the film in a way that this possibility of a heist could have happened.”

The Cairo Film Connection takes place Nov. 17 – 20. A jury consisting of Mariette Rissenbeek (Berlin International Film Festival managing director), Viola Shafik (Egyptian filmmaker and curator) and Raja Amari (Tunisian director) will present awards.

Here are the projects taking part in the event’s 9th edition:

Narrative features in development

“Bad Friend” (Egypt)
Director/producer: Ahmed El Ghoneimy

“Over Three Days” (Egypt)
Director: Tamer Ashley
Producer: Baho Bakhsh

“Cotton Queen” (Germany, France, Palestine)
Director: Suzannah Mirghani
Producers: Annemarie Jacir, Caroline Daube

“The Seasons of Jannet” (Tunisia)
Director: Mehdi Hmili
Producer: Moufida Faddila

“Hala’s Aziz” (Saudi Arabia)
Jawaher Alamri, Director
Producer: Mohammed Sindi

“Bella” (Morocco)
Mohcine Besri, director/producer

“Lamp in the Dark” (Sudan)
Director/producer: Mahdi El-Tayeb

Documentaries in development

“A Butterfly Hug” (Egypt, Sudan)
Director: Sally Abo Basha
Producer: Talal Alifi

“My Dad’s a Farmer” (Algeria)
El Kheyer Zidani is the director/producer

“Searching for Woody” (Egypt)
Director: Sara Shazli
Marianne Khoury is the producer

“Theft of Fire” (Palestine, Canada)
Director: Amer Shomali
Producer: Rashid Abdelhamid

In post-production, narrative features

“Red Path” (Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
Director: Lotfi Achalour
Producers: Anissa Daoud, Sébastien Hussenot

“Inshallah a Boy” (Jordan)
Director: Amjad Al Rasheed
Producers: Rula Nasser, Aseel Abayyash

Post-production Documentaries

“Let’s Play Soldiers” (Yemen, Qatar, U.S.)
Mariam Al-Dhubani is the director
Producer: Mohammed Al-Jaberi

“The Last Man” (Egypt, Brazil)
Director: Muhammad Salah
Producers: Mark Lotfy, Rodrigo Brum

“Suspended” (Lebanon, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
Director: Myriam El Hajj
Producer: Myriam Ssine