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Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy said securing international sales remains a challenge for Arab films, as he presented two features at El Gouna Film Festival (October 24-November 1).

Hefzy, head and co-founder of the Cairo-based production company Film Clinic, produced Egyptian filmmaker Jaylan Auf’s feature debut The Inevitable Journey To Find A Wedding Dress, which premieres in El Gouna’s narrative competition. He was also present for a retrospective screening of his own writing debut Snakes And Ladders (2001).

The seasoned writer/producer noted that, while many Arabic and Egyptian films tour festivals worldwide and often win awards, securing sales is problematic.

How can the filmmakers of low-budget independent films formulate sales and distribution strategies at a global level when they don’t have the same resources wielded by the larger production companies? As part of this week’s IFFR Pro Days, the industry program at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, experts gave their opinions.

Kyle Greenberg, head of marketing and distribution at U.S. company Utopia, said that filmmakers, especially ones helming independent and guerrilla productions, should be “the biggest advocates of their movies” and actively involved in the promotion, marketing and sales strategy of their titles.

“If you’re not advocating for yourself, you’re already losing. Filmmakers need to be thinking about marketing and audiences. If you are making a film in isolation, it could be art, but you are not thinking of where the movie lives,” he said.

“When we acquire movies, we are thinking about potential audiences,...

Titles for the Limelight, Harbour, Cinema Regained and Focus strands have been added to the line-up.

Marco Müller, who headed International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) from 1989-1991, is returning as part of the 2024 Tiger international competition jury.

He is being joined by Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Ena Sendijarević,producer, industry expert and founder of Easy Rider Films, Nadia Turincev; Hong Kong filmmaker Herman Yau; and LA Rebellion film movement figure and filmmaker Billy Woodberry, whose title Mário will have its world premiere in the Harbour strand.

They will choose the winners of the Tiger award, worth €40,000, and the special jury awards, worth...

Deadline on Monday launched the streaming site for its Contenders Film: International, featuring the full panel videos from Saturday’s award-season showcase of 12 movies submitted by their countries to this year’s Oscar International Feature race.

Click here to launch the streaming site.

Actors who took part in the discussions included South Korean entry Concrete Utopia‘s Lee Byung-hun, Renée Soutendijk from Netherlands’ Sweet Dreams, Eli Skorcheva from Bulgaria’s Blaga’s Lessons and Eliane Umuhire from Belgium’s Omen.

They were joined among others by directors including J.A. Bayona from Netflix’s Society of the Snow, Hugh Welchman from Poland’s The Peasants, Noora Niasari from Australia’s Shayda, llker Çatak from Germany’s The Teachers’ Lounge, Concrete Utopia‘s Um Tae-hwa, Ena Sendijarević from Sweet Dreams, Stephan Komandarev from Blaga’s Lessons, Omar Hilal from Egypt’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, Jude Anthany Joseph from India’s 2018 – Everyone Is a Hero,...

Deadline’s Contenders Film: International award-season event launches Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. Pt, the latest in our series of showcases that this time turns the focus toward global cinema via discussions with the casts and creatives of 12 movies submitted by their countries for the 2024 Academy Awards’ International Feature race.

Click to sign up for and watch today’s livestream.

The 2023 Oscar ceremony was a triumph for international film. Going into the ceremony, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front was a winner already, having earned a spectacular seven nominations. If that wasn’t enough, it came away with four statuettes: one for International Feature, and three for Cinematography, Music and Production Design. Clearly this can’t happen every year, but, like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite before it, Berger’s World War I epic proved that boundaries are being broken down, and international film, once synonymous with arthouse,...

Egypt’s Oscar submission “Voy! Voy! Voy!,” from director-writer-producer Omar Hilal, is a blackly comic look at migration viewed through the lens of a conman pretending to be visually impaired in order to play in the Blind Football World Cup. The fast-paced, entertaining film makes its Moroccan debut in the Special Screenings section of the Marrakech Film Festival. Following its September premiere in Egypt, it held the top box-office spot for two months and did remarkably well in the Gulf states.

The title translates as “Here I Come” in Spanish and is what the blind football players call out on the field to avoid collisions. But “Here I Come” could equally be the motto of its cheerily amoral protagonist Hassan (Mohamed Farrag), who is willing to try anything to escape his financially-challenged, dead-end life as a security guard.

Multi-hyphenate Hilal always wanted to make a film about migration. When he...

From its jaunty animated credits to its absurdly satisfying conclusion, “Voy! Voy! Voy!” is a saucy and blackly comic look at immigration. An entertaining first feature inspired by stranger-than-fiction actual events from seasoned adman Omar Hilal, here serving as director, writer and producer, Egypt’s official Oscar submission nabbed the top spot at the local box office for two months following its mid-September domestic release and also played well in the Gulf states. Boasting a smart screenplay with serious undertones and a powerhouse cast with impeccable timing, it’s an audience-friendly affair that could score some distribution in the west.

The action is set in 2013, a time of political turmoil in Egypt, although that is not overly stressed. Cheerfully amoral chief protagonist Hassan (Mohamed Farrag) is willing to try almost anything to escape his financially challenged, dead-end life as a security guard and head to Europe. When his opportunity to...

Rotterdam Film Festival Sets ‘Head South’ As Opening Film

Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk, coming-of-age comedy Head South has been announced as the opening picture of the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), running from January 25 to February 4. The festival has also teased a handful of early selections. They include Indian filmmaker Ishan Shukla’s dystopian, sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust and U.S. director Billy Woodberry’s biodoc Mário, about African independence activist Mário de Andrade, which will both world premiere. Further confirmations include European premieres for Amanda Kramer’s So Unreal and Ann Hui’s Elegies as well as Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, which is Egypt’s Oscar entry this year. The festival will unveil its full line-up on December 18.

Paul Schrader To Be Feted At Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Avellino Festival

U.S. director and screenwriter Paul Schrader will be honored with a Lifetime...

Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk coming-of-age comedy “Head South” will open the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam on Jan. 25, with the festival running until Feb. 4.

Ogilvie’s semi-autobiographical film is set in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1979 where a private schoolboy becomes desperately enamored with all things post-punk. The director’s last film, thriller “Lone Wolf,” screened in the festival’s Big Screen competition section in 2021.

Vanja Kaludjercic, IFFR festival director, said: “With ‘Head South,’ Jonathan Ogilvie returns to the festival with an unpredictable coming-of-age story that delights in its shifting tone. Quirkiness and nostalgia become sober and thoughtful, only to turn exuberant and then something else again, in a fitting tribute to post-punk subculture. Ogilvie is the kind of filmmaker we cherish at IFFR: those for whom the art is, above all, an adventure of discovery.”

Other films to have their world premieres at the Dutch festival include Indian filmmaker Ishan Shukla...

IFFR will run from January 25 to February 4.

The 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) will open with Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk coming-of-age comedy Head South on January 25.

New Zealand director Ogilvie returns to IFFR with Head South, a semi-autobiographical film that centres a private schoolboy who becomes desperately enamoured with all things post-punk in 1979 Christchurch. Ogilvie’s last film Lone Wolf screened in the festival’s Big Screen Competition in 2021.

The festival has also confirmed some of the first titles to play in its programme, along with details about industry event IFFR Pro Days.

Ishan Shukla’s dystopian sci-fi animation Schirkoa:...

The submissions for this year’s Oscar for best international feature include some of the best of world cinema. Below is a rundown of the entries for the 96th Academy Awards. The 15-title shortlist is slated to arrive on Dec. 21, prior to the nominations announcement on Jan. 23 and the ceremony itself, which is dated for March 10.

Albania

Alexander

Director: Ardit Sadiku

Logline: A documentary about an engineer who, after being fired by the navy for dissidence, hijacked a warship to get himself an dhis family to freedom.

Prodco: Ardit Sadiku Film

Argentina

The Delinquents

Director: Rodrigo Moreno

Logline: A ticklish, gently surreal saga following two colleagues who collude in robbing the bank where they work.

U.S. distribution: Mubi

Armenia

Amerikatsi

Director: Michael A. Goorjian

Logline: An Armenian-American relocates to Armenia after WWII and ends up in a Soviet prison for the crime of wearing a tie.

U.S.

Stuart Ford’s AGC International has taken global rights outside the Middle East and Pakistan to “Voy! Voy! Voy!,” the hit dramedy about a group of impoverished Egyptians who join a professional blind soccer team as a ploy to get to Europe. The film is Egypt’s candidate for the international film Oscar.

“Voy! Voy! Voy!,” which marks the directorial debut of hotshot Egyptian commercials director Omar Hilal, is the tale of a financially struggling security guard named Hassan, who dreams of a better life. One day he stumbles upon the professional sport of blind soccer and cunningly decides to pose as a visually impaired man to join a team that is close to playing a World Cup tournament in Europe. On this journey, Omar intersects with several characters, including a female journalist who begins to take an interest in the team.

The dramedy is inspired by true events. In...

Oscar voters in the Best International Feature Film category have received their group assignments for this year’s initial round of voting, with 89 films included on the seven lists that the Academy has sent to members.

The lists, which were obtained by TheWrap, include presumed favorites “The Zone of Interest” (United Kingdom), “The Taste of Things” (France), “The Promised Land” (Denmark) and “Perfect Days” (Japan), along with a number of documentaries, among them Estonia’s “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” Brazil’s “Pictures of Ghosts” and Ukraine’s “20 Days in Mariupol.”

The 89 films are four short of the record of 93 qualifying films in the category. The list of group assignments does not make up the Academy’s official list of eligible films; it’s possible that assigned films might still fail to qualify before first-round voting begins on Dec. 18. For the most part, though, films that are included in the group...

Predicting the eventual five Oscar nominees for Best International Feature is made difficult by the three-step process that begins after the October 2, 2023 deadline for countries to submit entries. To be part of the selection process for this category, which was called Best Foreign Language Film before 2020, requires a great deal of dedication. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2024 Oscars Best International Feature predictions.)

In the days following the deadline for submissions, the academy determines each film’s eligibility. Then the several hundred academy members who serve on the International Feature screening committee are divided into groups and required to watch all their submissions over a six-week period that ends in early December. Their top 15 vote-getters will make it to the next round. That list of semi-finalists will be revealed on December 21, 2023.

These 15 films will be made available to the entire academy membership who can cast ballots for the final five...

The Oscars Best International Feature Film race landed two major frontrunners on the same day on Thursday, with the United Kingdom submitting Jonathan Glazer’s chilling World War II drama “The Zone of Interest” and France following with Tran Anh Hung’s rapturous “The Taste of Things” in the one-film-per-country competition.

“The Zone of Interest,” set among German families who live on the outskirts of Auschwitz, won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and won raves as one of the most original and unnerving films to deal with the Holocaust since “Son of Saul,” which won the Oscar in this category eight years ago. It was considered the obvious choice for the U.K. to submit.

France, on the other hand, had an extremely difficult choice between Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” starring Sandra Huller as a woman on trial for murdering her husband,...

Egypt has selected Omar Hilal’s comedy Voy! Voy! Voy! as its candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Oscars.

Producers Vox Studios, Film Clinic and Image Nation Abu Dhabi announced the selection at the film’s glitzy UAE premiere ahead of its theatrical release across the Gulf on September 21.

Inspired by true events, Voy! Voy! Voy! tells the story of Hassan, a security guard living an impoverished life with his mother who dreams of traveling and living abroad.

One day, he stumbles on the sport of blind football and cunningly decides to pose as a visually impaired man to join a team close to playing a World Cup tournament in Europe. On this journey, he crosses paths with several characters including a rising female journalist following the team and a middle aged coach.

The ensemble cast is led by Mohamed Farrag and also features Bayoumi Fouad, Taha Desouki,...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Exclusive: Leading Egyptian independent production company Film Clinic is gearing up for the shoot of The Inevitable Journey Of Finding The Wedding Dress by Jaylan Auf.

Yasmin Raeis (Looking for Oum Kulthum) and newcomer Asma Galal co-star as a bride-to-be and her best friend who embark on a mad dash across Cairo in search of a wedding dress after a mishap with the original gown on the eve of the ceremony.

“It’s a social drama about two best friends from a low-income neighborhood,” says Film Clinic founder and head Mohamed Hefzy. “The city is very much part of the story and a character in the film.”

Auf previously worked as assistant director on Egyptian features such as Excuse My French, Décor and The Cat Mouse, while her short film Turning Ten played in Competition at the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2019.

“We’ve been trying to get...