Egyptian filmmaker Ayman El Amir, who co-directed the groundbreaking Cannes award-winning documentary “On the Fringe of Dreaming,” is growing his subsequent function movie, “A Pair of Footwear within the Darkish Nook of the Moon.” The satirical comedy is without doubt one of the tasks that can take part within the Crossroads Co-Manufacturing Discussion board at Agora, the commercial department of Thessaloniki Worldwide Airport. Cinema pageant.
Set in a distant Egyptian village, the movie follows George, an eccentric Coptic dreamer who’s determined to turn into a well-known actor however is caught enjoying an additional in low-budget movies. Whereas his village is promised a mega-sewage therapy undertaking, George additionally enjoys a miraculous break on a space-themed actuality TV present promising a visit to the moon. In a single day, he turned a well-known nationwide hero.
However when the present is uncovered as a rip-off, George turns into a laughing inventory. Returning residence in shame and exiled by his group, he discovers that the undertaking promised to the village was additionally an phantasm. The failed star embarks on a journey of self-discovery, discovering his true identification, discovering a deep sense of belonging, and rediscovering a spirit of defiance.
“A Pair of Footwear within the Darkish Nook of the Moon” is written and directed by El Amir and produced by Nada Riyadh for his or her Cairo-based Felucca Movies. The duo co-directed “The Brink of Desires,” which gained the Golden Eye Award for Greatest Documentary on the 2024 Cannes Movie Competition – the primary Egyptian movie to obtain the award. The couple was additionally named Selection MENA Expertise of the Yr.
Speak to Selection In Thessaloniki, El Amir explains how his movie explores a precarious second in Egyptian historical past, a interval of “unregulated capitalism” the place the federal government’s lavish visions of a “New Republic” gave solution to “new satellite tv for pc cities, large highways, grandiose bridges, extravagant resorts and splendid new gated cities” – an unattainable actuality for the thousands and thousands of strange individuals dwelling on the fringes of this formidable “Egyptian dream.”
The movie, says the director, asks the query: “How can we plan for a future that’s not in our management?”
“In a society the place we solely speak about failure as a precursor to success, ‘A Pair of Footwear within the Darkish Nook of the Moon’ is a up to date black comedy fable that satirizes our obsession with success and fame in any respect prices,” says El Amir.
“At its core, this movie explores the boundaries of aspirations in modern Egyptian society, the invisible obstacles that block goals of equality, alternative and private success. It’s a deeply reflective story about identification, belonging and the way we understand ourselves,” he continues. “But beneath these layers it’s concerning the sudden, surprising realization of stepping out from underneath a predetermined gaze and eventually being seen for who you really are.”
“The Brink of Desires” is a coming-of-age story that follows the Panorama Barsha Troupe, an all-female theater group in a distant village in southern Egypt who take to the streets to carry out their performs denouncing underage marriage, home violence and patriarchy in a deeply conservative society.
Ayman El Amir and Nada Riyadh co-directed “On the Fringe of the Dream”.
Courtesy of Ahmed Ismail Mousa
With “A Pair of Footwear”, El Amir returns to Barsha, the place he spent a number of years in the course of the filming of his earlier movie. There, he says, the tough realities of each day life – “unforgiving solar, parched earth, excessive unemployment and a bankrupt financial system” – distinction sharply with the glitzy narrative of a “New Egypt”.
It’s this “unexplored and unprecedented” model of Egypt that he needs to convey to the display screen.
“One of many vital motivations that pushed me to embark on this new undertaking is what I skilled in the course of the theatrical distribution of “The Brink of Desires”,” he explains. Throughout viewers Q&A on what was the primary Egyptian documentary ever commercially distributed within the nation, El Amir was “shocked by the stereotypes that the general public” – metropolis dwellers in Cairo and Alexandria – “have about their fellow residents who dwell within the south.”
“Over the previous decade, Egyptian cinema has turn into dominated by photos of individuals dwelling in luxurious compounds and gated communities that characterize lower than 10 p.c of Egyptian society,” he says. “We not often see individuals from the South on display screen. For me, it is a query of illustration that I discover essential and pressing.”
“A Pair of Footwear within the Darkish Nook of the Moon” is in superior improvement, with preliminary funding in place and filming deliberate for late 2028. The undertaking was not too long ago awarded by trade platform CineGouna, the place it acquired a $10,000 grant from Arab Radio and Tv and a $10,000 manufacturing grant from ESLSCA College.
“Our principal aim in Thessaloniki is to attach with strategic European and worldwide co-producers who share our imaginative and prescient and may help us navigate European funding and co-production pathways,” explains El Amir. He notes that whereas the movie’s village scenes can be shot in southern Egypt, “the space-themed actuality TV sequence could be shot in some other co-production nation.”
The Thessaloniki Movie Competition runs from November 5 to fifteen.