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Egyptian acting star Mona Zaki did not hold back when she was asked about the new generation of actors in the Arab film industry being consumed by social media and brand deals.

“It’s all fake, from beginning to end,” declared Zaki during a conversation event at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival.

“If the new generation relies purely on social media and brand deals for fame, they’re not going to learn anything. Even if they work with big important brands, they’ll be underpaid because they’re just being given a superficial image,” she continued. “They won’t be able to grow in their career as authentic actors.”

“I don’t really deal with social media, I don’t know how to. I think when people become too obsessed with it, they get stuck in a shallow mindset that doesn’t allow for much personal growth.”

Zaki,...

Jeff Nichols has revealed he is writing his first original work since 2016 sci-fi Midnight Special that will take him back to his native territory of Arkansas, backdrop to early features Shotgun Stories and Mud.

The project is in addition to his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novels ‘The Passenger’ and its companion ‘Stella Maris’ about siblings living with the knowledge that their father helped develop the atom bomb.

“I am adapting the last two Cormac McCarthy novels but then I am also writing my first original script since Midnight Special, my fourth film,” said Nichols.

Fifth film Loving, about interracial couple Mildred and Richard Loving’s 1960s battle to have their marriage recognized in Virginia, was inspired by Nancy Buirski’s 2011 documentary The Loving Story, while Chicago-based crime drama The Bikeriders was based on Danny Lyon’s book of the same name.

“I’ve been making period pieces and films...

Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, best known internationally for groundbreaking epic “The Yacoubian Building,” more recently shot “El Set,” a biopic of Egyptian icon Umm Kulthum, who is considered the Arab world’s greatest singer.

Kulthum has also been praised by Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, among other Western artists, and sampled by Beyonce and Shakira.

Hamed’s new Arabic blockbuster with international ambitions, now in post, features Egyptian star Mona Zaki playing the vocalist born in the Nile delta village of Tamay al‐Zahirah, who from the late 1920s onwards became the first Arab singer to disseminate her work to the masses via the new technologies of the times: radio, the phonograph, cinema and television.

In the process, Kulthum recorded some 300 songs over a 60-year career, while conquering millions of fans and disrupting gender norms with her powerful, often politically charged, music.

A sneak 18-minute peek...

Bye Bye Tiberiasdirector Lina Soualem is among the filmmakers selected for theseventh edition of the expanded Atlas Workshops, the industry platform and talent incubatorfor Arab and African filmmakers of the 2024 Marrakech International Film Festival, for which US director Jeff Nichols will be this year’s mentor.

Soualem is taking part with her first fiction featureAlicante,along with filmmakers include French-Moroccan actor turned director Djanis Bouzyani with his documentaryAnd Still I Riseand Mouloud Ouyahia with the follow-up to his Cannes 2023 Directors’ Fortnight shortThe House is On Fire, Might as Well Get Warmwith his first featureThe Source.

Of the 17 projects in development,...

U.S. director Jeff Nichols – whose “The Bikeriders” recently made a splash at Cannes and Telluride – is set to be the official patron of the upcoming Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops that will see him mentoring selected projects in various stages from the Middle East and North Africa.

Launched in 2018, the Atlas Workshops are an industry initiative to foster and support the emergence of a new generation of Moroccan, Arab, and African filmmakers that provides an environment for exchanges between global professionals and regional talent.

The Marrakech fest’s industry platform this year comprise 17 projects in development and 10 films in production or post-production, hailing from 13 countries. These works have been selected from more than 300 applications received by the workshop from across the African continent and the Arab world.

Standout projects on display at the workshops include “El Sett” by prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed (“‘The Yacoubian Building”). The film,...

U.S. director Jeff Nichols has been named as the 2024 patron of the Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops, as the talent and project incubator also unveils the projects selected for this year’s edition.

Launched in 2018, the initiative has supported a raft of emerging and more established filmmakers and their projects, hailing from Morocco, the Arab world, and Africa.

Nichols – whose filmography includes 2011 Cannes Critics’ Week winner Take Shelter, Cannes Palme d’Or contenders Mud (2012) and Loving (2016) as well as more recent credit The Bikeriders – is the second announced patron.

The role was created last year, with Martin Scorsese due to kick off the inaugural patronship, but he was forced to cancel his Marrakech trip for personal reasons at the eleventh hour.

Nichols will take part in a number of sessions with selected projects in development and post-production. This year’s cohort of filmmakers will be known as the Class of Jeff Nichols.

Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (Gea) has launched a new film fund called Big Time Investment to boost production of quality Arabic movies and announced a slate of Egyptian feature films toplined by a biopic of Egyptian icon Umm Kulthum who is considered the Arab world’s greatest singer.

Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, whose epic “Kira and El Gen” about local resistance to British occupation, is recent hit, will direct the film titled “El Set.” Egyptian star Mona Zaki will play Kulthum who from the late 1920s onwards became the first prominent Arab singer to disseminate her work to the masses via the new technologies of the times: radio, the phonograph, cinema and television.

The fund was announced in Cairo by Gea chairman Turki Alalshikh who said Gea will serve as the roughly $130 million fund’s primary sponsor with the Ministry of Culture acting as a co-sponsor, according...