Bassem Magdy-Cairo
The commercial show of Ahmed Abdullah Al-Sayed's "Night of the Outside" began two days ago in Egypt, weeks after the winner of his best actor, Sharif Desouki, at the 40th Cairo International Film Festival.
The film, the fifth of its director's works, takes place in a single day, during which the young director Mu (Karim Qassem) takes a number of positions with the taxi driver Mustapha Sherif El Desouki and they meet together with Laila (Mona Hala) And drama.
The director says that the film was produced by his own efforts by collecting the contributions from the participants so that he will be shown to the light, so he is not far from his previous experiences. From his first steps out, after years of working as a contender, he conducts independent experiments.
The city's effectiveness
In his first feature film, "Heliopolis" (2010), he presented himself as one of the independent film directors. He said he wanted to present a real cinema that expresses real people, and Heliopolis is a real experience in his life and stories lived by friends he knows. .
| Director Ahmad Abdullah during filming (the sites of communication) |
His second film "Microphone" (2011) tells the story of Khaled (the artist Khaled Abu Al Naga) returning to Alexandria from America to look for his sweetheart, to meet the city's young people who sing hip-hop and play music and draw graffiti.
Abdullah tells the story that he attended the film in a workshop that brought together young artists with real stories, and denied that his film was an improvisation.
Brushes and cover
The third film, "Brash and Ghata" (2013), attempted to approach the Egyptian revolution in a special artistic way, but it did not find a large audience, even though the artist Asir Yassin played his heroism, and the film was almost devoid of dialogue.
Critic Rania Youssef wrote about this experience that "Brash and Ghata" matured from the previous experiences, where Abdullah completely relied on the expression in the language of cinematic image without dialogue, and returned to the cinema to its origins as the language of expression in the image.
Criticist Mahmud 'Abd al-Shakur wrote that the silence and the truncated dialogues are at the heart of his main idea film, the outstanding questions about the meaning of the revolution and the failure to know the facts of the serious events such as the opening of prisons after the January revolution.
Towards a commercial cinema
In contrast to his previous films, Abdullah made a big step towards commercial cinema in his film "Dikour" (2014), which was produced by a large production company, in which actors from stars such as Khaled Abul-Naga, Horya Farghali and Majed Al-Kadwani participated, but he did not give up the temptation to experiment. Fully black and white.
The film tells the story of Maha - a fan of Farghali - a lover of cinema and decoration engineer that moves between two worlds do not know which is realistic and imaginary.
| Artist Karim Kassem during filming (networking sites) |
Critic of the film, Amir Al-Omari wrote that it was courageous to use the black and white director, and his success - in cooperation with the director of photography - in portraying many scenes like classic Egyptian romantic films. But the main problem is that when you make a film that wants to mimic the movies of the past To present a work that brings to the audience present something new about the present;
Rania Yussef wrote that the film tends to commercial cinema in terms of the presence of stars, in addition to the subject that tends to the psychological game, which gives a kind of light comedy, especially in the scenes of the "flashback" and the moments of discovery of the public to the reality of each character.
An outside night
In his latest film, Abdallah returns after four years of absence to discuss his favorite subject about Cairo, saying that much of the film is related to the search for our place in the city. "Not only this film but I imagine that most of my previous films were wondering ... Who we are "What do we do, and our relationship around us is just questions, I do not answer."
The film attracted a lot of attention, and the director avoided some of his previous films. He presented a mix of his past experiences and comedy, which made the audience laugh a lot with the film's events, even though some accused him of imitating the movie "Hot Night".
"We did not rely on improvisation in the real sense, we just recreated the scenes according to the spirit of each actor." The actor reads the scene and sees how he felt and what he thinks about his performance, I believe in the logic of the workshop, and that people work with Some to develop the project, and I do not believe that the director comes with ideas from heaven and is required to achieve all. "
The director of the film, Abdullah, sums up his cinematic style by saying that he tends to distance himself from the major production companies and make personal films because the director is distinguished in telling his personal stories, going down and filming, not waiting for the funding to be completed. He is not afraid of any authority for the public, critics or the syndicate. .
"Working with movie-loving people is a great wealth, and it's more important to have a big production with the director, but he works with people who are not sure what they're doing."
These reasons summarize the features of the most important filmmaker in the independent Egyptian cinema, and perhaps the film "Night outside" most of his films close to commercial cinema during the last decade.