The phenomenon of repeating the faces of actors in the Ramadan series has been rampant for about 10 years, but with the passage of time, and with the emergence of new faces every year, this phenomenon is no longer a place for this phenomenon, especially in relatively large roles, and with veteran actors, who may carry a business burden under their name.
However, this year, the Syrian actor Jamal Suleiman violated this rule, and appeared in 3 series at once in the same season.
During the month of Ramadan, Gamal Suleiman presented 3 completely different roles, two Egyptian series and a Syrian series, each with a special taste. So who is the role of a fanatical father for his views in “Who Said?”
To Major General Abbas Kamel in the series "The Choice 3", and even the role of a fashion designer with a complex emotional life in the series "Shadow".
bossy dad
The series "Who Said?"
The Ramadan season, where two episodes were shown before the holy month, and then completed its show through only 15 episodes, unlike the usual number of 30 episodes, and Jamal Suleiman participated in the championship, the young actor “Ahmed Dash” and “Nadine” and a group of new young faces.
The series deals with the story of the young Sherif, who finishes high school with a grade that qualifies him to enter the College of Engineering, which implicates him in it after his father insists not to miss this opportunity, but on the other hand, Sherif holds different dreams for himself, as a young businessman who invades the markets with a new product.
Sharif decides to leave school and devote himself to his project, at the same time when the father suffers from difficulties in his work after the death of his former boss. This leads, by extension, to the traditional conflict between father and son, and the two dissonant ways of thinking, and who has control over the future of the young Sharif, the father’s traditional ideas, or son's thoughts.
Jamal Suleiman’s performance was distinguished by the ability to move between the opposing feelings of the father. The old methods of education, what created a contradiction in the character was appropriate to the spirit of the series, which tried not to favor one generation at the expense of another until the end.
Although the series revolves primarily around young people and their crises, whether Sharif and his sister or his friends, the best characters of the series in terms of writing are for the father, who played Jamal Suleiman, as it came closer to realism in its monitoring of a middle-aged Arab man from the upper middle class with what it bears This character is complicated by the attempt to continue in a capitalist world that makes him just a cog in the wheel of production to ensure his family's economic stability, as well as his tyrannical control over the course of his family's affairs as the only thing he can control in his life.
This appears in the father’s inability to confront his manager at work, who asks him to abandon his principles, and his dealings more strictly with the workers below in the career corps, while he demands his son and daughter to abide by the plan drawn up for them, and his continuous desire to support them financially as long as they carry out his orders that he sees It is in their interest, as he has no problem burdening his back with the high university fees as long as the son enters the Faculty of Engineering, or to help the daughter with a monthly allowance on the condition that she works in a hospital that allows her to promote her career in the future.
His intentions are certainly good, but they are enveloped in economic violence and material control over the course of family affairs, which is less discussed in Arab soap operas that show the fathers’ characters in particular, either purely evil, or kind and saintly.
Here we have a father who holds both sides, the viewer may respect him but certainly will sometimes condemn him, especially since the work triumphs in the end for the values of youth and modernity, when the son is given the opportunity to prove that he is capable of doing an individual thing outside the will of the strict head of the family.
Choice 3
Jamal Suleiman appeared in the third part of the Egyptian series The Choice, as Major General Abbas Kamel, Director of Egyptian General Intelligence since 2018, where Suleiman benefited from the formal rapprochement between him and the Egyptian General, while also using makeup to show him greatly similar to him.
The Egyptian Major General previously held the position of Director of the Office of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, since his work in Military Intelligence, passing through his position in the Ministry of Defense until his assumption of the Presidency of the Republic, and was assigned in 2018 to run the work of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service.
“The Choice” 3 directed by Peter Mimi, written by Hani Sarhan, and like the previous two parts, it deals with a close period of Egyptian history, and starring some of the first-class stars to perform real personalities, and in this season, Ahmed Ezz, Karim Abdel Aziz, Ahmed El Sakka and Yasser play the starring role. Jalal.
The role of Jamal Suleiman in this series was largely limited among other roles that occupy more screen time, unless it gave him a chance to even compete with his other roles in the same season.
In the series The Choice, and other similar works that deal with relatively recent real personalities, the actor becomes in trouble to present the character, does he try to be satisfied with the formal similarity, or does he turn his back on the entire real character, and deals with the text written for him and gives him his talent with his own touch, which shows its spirit and not her outward appearance.
Unfortunately, Jamal Suleiman in “The Choice 3” took the same approach that Sabri Fawaz and Khaled Al-Sawy chose in the same series, which is an attempt to reach the best formal rapprochement only, which is difficult to reach in general, so they appeared as if they were ordinary people disguised as real characters trying to Imitate them, not actors who are able to own the reins of the characters and move them.
Shadow and Monsieur Gibran
As for the Syrian series "Shadow" only, Jamal Suleiman appeared in a different role. He is Monsieur Gibran, the famous fashion designer, who disappears from the limelight after the suicide of one of his models, with whom he had previously been in a romantic relationship, but he is forced to return again.
At the same time, his paths intersect with Qais, the honorable lawyer who resigns from his job for not being able to defend a rapist and murderer, and Qais's former boss, Jalal, who manipulates everyone.
The series was supposed to be filmed for its presentation in the last Ramadan season of 2021, but it was postponed due to the spread of the Corona epidemic, and then there were changes in the staff, including the exclusion of the Syrian actor Basil Khayat, and it was written by Mahmoud Idris and Zuhair Al Mulla, and it is based on an idea by Saif Reda. Hamed, directed by Mahmoud Kamel, and co-starring Jamal Suleiman, Abdel Moneim Amayri, Youssef El Khal, Kinda Hanna, and Jesse Abdo.
Here, Jamal Suleiman plays a role that brings back to memory his old roles that tend to social romance, and which brought him fame in the Arab world.
This role is very similar to other works of his, in the nature of the same character, such as "Devil's Gardens", in which he played the role of a middle-aged man who falls in love with different women despite his mysterious past, and his life shrouded in violence and crime, both of which depend mainly on Jamal Suleiman's masculine charm, which had a special weight in his early artistic career, attracted an audience of fans.
The most important note about Jamal Suleiman’s performance in the series “Shadow” is his comfort in dealing with the Syrian dialect. The actor, despite his participation in Egyptian series since 2006, still suffers from difficulties with the Egyptian dialect, which makes his speech always heavy on the ear, and most importantly, it confuses performance in general.
But despite the great Syrian actor's diligence in trying to create a difference between his three roles this Ramadan, the most important of them was in the Egyptian series "Who Said?"
Directed by Nadine Khan, which brought back the success of the “Sard” workshop experience under the leadership of Maryam Naoum, which achieved a similar result in the series “Khali Balak Min Zizi” last year.