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Exclusive: Marvel’s Moon Knight Director Mohamed Diab has revealed fresh details about his new feature Lion, starring Egyptian megastar Mohamed Ramadan in a role inspired by Ancient Rome rebel slave Spartacus.

“It’s a period piece, a kind of Spartacus meets Braveheart set in 1850s Egypt,” said Diab, talking to Deadline on the fringes of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival.

Currently mid-way through shooting in Cairo, Lion marks Diab’s first picture back in his native Egypt since 2016 breakthrough Clash. In between times, he made the Palestine-set drama Amira, followed by directing Moon Knight for Marvel.

Diab has revealed very little about the new movie, which was originally announced under the title of Black Lion and is being billed as his most ambitious Arab-language production to date.

“It’s about slavery in the 1850s. It’s an epic film. It’s not based on a real person but inspired by true events.

The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors from the region.

Screen International has unveiled the five emerging Middle East and North Africa talents in the fields of acting and directing selected for the seventh edition of Arab Stars Of Tomorrow.

This year’s line-up comprises Adwa Bader, the actress and poet from Saudi Arabia; Jordan’s Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha, director; Egyptian writer and director Morad Mostafa; Palestinian actor Muhammad Abed El Rahman; and fellow Jordanian actress Noor Taher.

The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors who...

This year’s selection of five rising talents will be unveiled on Friday, December 1

The seventh edition of Screen International’s talent-spotting initiative Arab Stars of Tomorrow will once again launch at this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival (November 30-December 9).

This year’s selection of five rising talents will be unveiled on Friday, December 1 in Screen’s second Red Sea print daily and on Screendaily.com.

On Saturday, December 2 the stars will take part in a panel discussion at 2pm Ast at the festival hosted by Screen, following a breakfast reception

Arab Stars of Tomorrow celebrates Arab talent...

Two cool items for Friday: Cinematic Broadcasting, and Karate. Arri has announced that the Amira Live cameras paired with powerful cinema-broadcast lenses were used to shoot the World Karate Championships in Budapest. How cool it that?

The Arri Amira Live. BTS of the broadcasting the of World Karate Championships in Budapest. Source: Arri Amira Live X 3

As stated by Arri: “The Arri Multicam System continues to deliver truly cinematic images and the best viewer experience for sports broadcasting. For the 2023 Wkf World Karate Championships in Budapest, the International Sports Broadcasting Company (Isb) in cooperation with Antenna Hungária Zrt. integrated three Arri Amira Live cameras into their production workflow. Lenses included Fujinon Pl Box Lens, Canon Pl 25-250, and Canon 15-120”. The Arri Amira Live (“The Cinematic Super 35 Live-tv Camera”) was announced in March 2021, with the goal of enhancing the connection between cinema and broadcast, term we define as “Cinematic Broadcasting...

Amjad Al Rasheed’s feature debut “Inshallah a Boy” – co-produced by Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – was awarded La Biennale di Venezia Prize at Final Cut, an industry program at the Venice Film Festival dedicated to films from African and Arab countries.

Shot in February, with mostly Jordanian crew, it was lensed by Kanamé Onoyama.

In the story, a mother and a housewife – played by Mouna Hawa, known for “In Between” – has to face the sudden death of her husband. According to the inheritance law, his family is entitled to most of her belongings, including the home she paid for herself – just because she doesn’t have a son. Desperate, she pretends to be pregnant.

“So many people ask us: ‘Is this real? Do you really have this law?!’ It’s inspired by the experience of someone I know, someone close to me. But when we started to develop the story,...

Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s absurdist social satire “Feathers,” in which the good-for-nothing husband of a woman with three children is turned into a chicken, is the big winner of the sixth edition of the Critics’ Awards for Arab Films.

The biting black comedy, winner of last year’s Cannes Critics’ Week prize, scooped best film, director and screenplay at the prizes organized by Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc) and voted on by 167 film critics from 68 countries, who viewed the films on Festival Scope.

Nominees are chosen among Arab-language films that premiered on the festival circuit outside of the Arab world in 2021. The awards were announced on Sunday in Cannes.

“Feathers,” which took six years to get to the big screen, was produced by Juliette Lepoutre from Still Moving (France), in co-production with Mohamed Hefzy’s Film Clinic (Egypt), Shahinaz Al Akkad from Lagoonie Film (Egypt), Derk-Jan Warrink and...

167 film critics from 68 countries voted on the awards organised by the Arab Cinema Centre.

Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s social satire Feathers, which won the top prize at Cannes Critics’ Week last year, has swept the board at the sixth edition of the Critics’ Awards for Arab Films.

The film, which was nominated in four categories, won best film, director and screenplay.

This year’s edition of the awards, spearheaded by the Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc), focuses on Arab-language films that premiered on the festival circuit outside of the Arab world in 2021.

It was voted on by 167 film critics from 68 countries,...

Saudi-Egyptian co-production revolves around the special bond between a young Bedouin orphan and a camel.

Egyptian director A.B. Shawky, whose first feature Yomeddine enjoyed a buzzy Cannes launch in Competition in 2018, has signed to direct Saudi-set coming-of-age tale Sea Of Sands.

The feature is a joint production between Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, known as Ithra, and Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy, whose recent credits include Feathers, Amira and Souad. Ithra’s head of performing arts and cinema Majed Z. Samman also takes a producer credit.

The film revolves around the relationship between a young Bedouin orphan...

Saudi-Egyptian co-production revolves around the special bond between a young Bedouin orphan and a camel.

Egyptian director A.B. Shawky, whose first feature Yomeddine enjoyed a buzzy Cannes launch in Competition in 2018, has signed to direct Saudi-set coming-of-age tale Hajjan (previously titled Sea Of Sands).

The feature is a joint production between Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, known as Ithra, and Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy, whose recent credits include Feathers, Amira and Souad. Ithra’s head of performing arts and cinema Majed Z. Samman also takes a producer credit.

The film revolves around the relationship between a...

It is no spoiler to say that Marvel Studios’ “Moon Knight” is unlike anything attempted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008’s “Iron Man.” Not only is it Marvel’s first Disney Plus series that doesn’t focus on already established characters, the first four episodes of the show, which Variety has seen, contain not a single spoken reference to the MCU. No one talks about Thanos or the Snap, Spider-Man or Wakanda. There are no mentions of the Avengers or the Eternals, infinity stones or multiverses. And not a single familiar face — not Doctor Strange or Wanda Maximoff, Captain Marvel or Shang-Chi — makes an appearance.

When the team behind “Moon Knight” set out to make it, however, walling off the MCU “wasn’t a goal, ironically,” says director and executive producer Mohamed Diab.

“Moon Knight” follows a nebbishy London museum gift shop employee named Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) who...

“Moon Knight” director Mohamed Diab originally pitched the Disney+ series to focus heavily on Egypt.

Why? Because to him, the nation and culture have been “inauthentically portrayed throughout Hollywood’s history,” as Diab told SFX Magazine.

The most recent example of such “orientalism,” as Diab pointed out, was seen in Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 1984,” which featured depictions deemed by some as stereotypes in a sequence supposedly set in Egypt.

“You never see Cairo. You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo. This really angers us,” Diab said. “I remember seeing ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ and there was a big sequence in Egypt and it was a disgrace for us. You had a sheik — that doesn’t make any sense to us. Egypt looked like a country from the Middle Ages. It looked like the desert.”

Diab directs four of the six episodes...

Marvel’s upcoming series “Moon Knight” features four of six episodes directed by Mohamed Diab, the Egyptian screenwriter and filmmaker best known for his feature directorial debut “Cairo 678” and his 2021 Venice world premiere “Amira.” The Marvel series incorporates elements of Ancient Egyptian mythology in telling the story of Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), a mercenary who becomes the conduit of the Egyptian moon god Khonshu. It was of utmost importance for Diab that the series did right by Egyptian representation.

“In my pitch, there was a big part about Egypt, and how inauthentically it has been portrayed throughout Hollywood’s history,” Diab recently told SFX Magazine. “It’s always exotic – we call it orientalism. It dehumanizes us. We are always naked, we are always sexy, we are always bad, we are always over the top.”

Diab pointed to “Wonder Woman 1984” as a recent example of Hollywood failing Egypt. The...

Mohamed Diab is an Egyptian screenwriter and filmmaker and the mastermind behind lauded films like “Cairo 678” (2010) and slightly gimmicky “Clash” (2016) that is completely set inside a police van during the riots. His latest work “Amira” (2021), done through a co-production arrangement of three countries, while set in Gaza Strip, also came with significant festival reputation (it premiered at Venice) and several awards (most significantly from Rome International Film Festival). Most recently, it was screened at Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Amira is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival

The titular character played by Tara Abboud is a teenage girl interested in photography who thinks she can be sure of her roots. Her father Nawar, whom she dutifully visits in the notorious Meggido prison in Israel (where he serves the life sentence for terrorism) has the status of a Palestinian freedom fighter. Nawar’s family takes care of Amira and her mother...

Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy is stepping down as president of the Cairo Film Festival. During his four-year tenure, the executive helped to revamp the prominent Arab fest, which had been losing luster due to political turbulence.

The announcement was made on Tuesday by Egypt’s Minister of Culture, Enas Abdel Dayem, who said veteran Egyptian actor Hussein Fahmy will take over the fest’s presidency.

Fahmy, who is 81, has starred in more than 100 Egyptian film, TV and theater productions. A UCLA graduate with some U.S. connections, Fahmy had previously headed the Cairo fest, which is the grande dame of Arab film events, between 1998 and 2001.

“I am proud to have spent the past four years as president of Cairo International Film Festival, working with a great team of talented individuals with the aim of lifting the festival towards bigger local, regional and international recognition and for being a platform to...

He will be replaced by veteran actor Hussein Fahmy.

The Egyptian Ministry of Culture has announced that producer Mohamed Hefzy is stepping down as president of the Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff) to be replaced by veteran actor Hussein Fahmy, who returns to the role having previously held the position from 1998 to 2001.

Hefzy was appointed as director of Ciff in 2018 and has been credited with putting the event back on the international map during his four years at the helm.

He only expected to be in the role for a year or two but ended up overseeing four editions, with...

“Peaceful,” Emmanuelle Bercot’s Cesar-winning melodrama which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, has landed domestic distribution with New York-based banner Distrib US.

Sold by Studiocanal, the movie is headlined by Benoit Magimel and Catherine Deneuve (pictured). Magimel, who won the Cesar Award for best actor — beating fellow nominee Adam Driver — stars as a man dying of cancer. “Peaceful” world premiered out of competition at Cannes where it earn warm reviews.

Distrib US has also acquired “A Tale of Love and Desire” and “Les Inde Galantes,” which are both screening this week at the Film at Lincoln Center as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York. The event is being co-organized by Unifrance, the French film and TV advocacy org.

“Les Inde Galantes,” directed by Philippe Béziat, is a documentary following 30 dancers reprising Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque masterpiece on the stage of Paris’s legendary Opéra Bastille.

With last year’s surprise nominee “The Man Who Sold His Skin” hailing from Tunisia, Oscar handicappers should be sure to give West Asia and North Africa titles close scrutiny this time around.

Among the 11 submissions are several titles likely to be highly competitive in the international feature category. These include Iran’s social media critique “A Hero” from previous two-time winner Asghar Farhadi; Israel’s “Let It Be Morning”, a wry satire helmed by Eran Kolirin, about a Palestinian village put under military lockdown by the Israeli army; and Lebanon’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” a darkly comic commentary on the realities of modern-day Lebanon from feature debutant Mounia Akl.

Although “A Hero” may not be prime Farhadi, it already boasts the Grand Prix from Cannes. The narrative focuses on one of life’s losers, a likeable working-class man who, while on a short furlough from debtors prison, engineers events...

The awards are voted on by 95 international correspondents from 36 countries.

Xavier Giannoli’s literary adaptation Lost Illusions leads the nominations of the 27th edition of France’s Lumière awards, followed by Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion winner Happening and Arthur Harari’s Onoda, 10,000 Nights In The Jungle.

The awards, which are voted on by 95 international correspondents hailing from 36 countries this year, are France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

Giannoli’s adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s eponymous 19th-century novel, which premiered in competition in Venice this year, was nominated in five categories including best film, director, screenplay, actor...

Jordan’s Royal Film Commission has pulled Egyptian director Mohamed Diab’s drama “Amira” – which was filmed in Jordan and is set in the Palestinian West Bank – as its submission to the 2022 international feature Oscar race following a storm of social media controversy against the film.

Pic, which takes its cue from real-life instances of Palestinian children conceived behind bars in Israeli jails with smuggled sperm, has suddenly prompted a rapidly increasing number of Palestinian activists to protest on Twiter and other social media. The film premiered in Venice in September and subsequently played at the El Gouna fest in Egypt and the Carthage fest in Tunisia.

Since 2012, more than 100 children have been conceived using the smuggled sperm of incarcerated Palestinians, according to the end titles of the film which revolves around a teenage girl who believes she was conceived from the sperm of a Palestinian activist serving a life sentence.

Film revolves around a West Bank teenager conceived via the smuggled sperm of a Palestinian prisoner.

Jordan’s Royal Film Commission has withdrawn Egyptian director Mohamed Diab’s drama Amira as its submission to the 2022 international feature Oscar race following a local backlash against the film.

Filmed in Jordan and set in the Palestinian West Bank, the film was inspired by the true phenomenon of children conceived using the smuggled sperm of Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israeli jails.

It revolves around the fictional tale of a teenage girl who believes she was conceived from the sperm of a famous Palestinian activist serving a life term.

Eric Lagesse, the CEO/president of Paris-based arthouse distributor and world sales outfit Pyramide Films, received the Industry Tribute Award at Cairo Film Festival on Friday. Variety spoke with him about his relationship with Arab cinema, and the state of the independent film business in France.

How do you feel about receiving this tribute?

It’s great, but I have had a year to get used to it. Because of the pandemic, I didn’t receive it last year, as planned. Nothing major has changed in the meantime. I am still very fond of Arab and Egyptian films. We are now working with a new generation of films and filmmakers like “Amira” (pictured), which played in the Horizons Competition at the Venice Film Festival this year.

What is your connection to the Arab film world?

We have been collaborating with the Arab world since the beginning of Pyramide. The first...

In our fifth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International puts the spotlight on six emerging Middle Eastern and North African talents.

In our fifth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International puts the spotlight on six emerging Middle Eastern and North African talents in the fields of acting and directing.

This year’s selection features Egyptian actress Bassant Ahmed, Kuwaiti filmmaker Maysaa Almumin, Emirati actor Khalifa Al-Jassem, Tunisian actress Zbeida Belhajamor, Saudi director Sara Mesfer and Sudanese actor Mustafa Shehata.

For the third year running, the edition has been organised in cooperation with the Cairo International Film Festival.

Every year since its creation in 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invites the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The award is presented annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue and that was released theatrically in their respective countries between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021. The shortlist of fifteen finalists is scheduled to be announced on 21 December 2021. The final five nominees are scheduled to be announced on 8 February 2022.

Here are the Asian Submissions for Best International Feature Film. There are some excellent movies in this bunch and we have seen and reviewed already some of them.

Armenia

“Should the Wind Drop” by Nora Martirosyan

Azerbaijan

“The Island Within” by Ru Hasanov

Bangladesh

“Rehana” by Abdullah Mohammad Saad

Bhutan

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2022 Academy Awards

Entries for the 2022 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27, 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. This is the first time since 2018 that the ceremony will take place in March, having moved to avoid conflicting with the Winter Olympics.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue...

Since 2012, more than 100 children have been conceived using the smuggled-out sperm of incarcerated Palestinians — or so it is claimed by the end titles of Mohamed Diab’s “Amira.” But here, this phenomenon, the mechanics of which make for a genuinely riveting first act, is somehow judged not dramatically fertile enough to carry an entire film. Instead, Diab’s increasingly tin-eared, hysterical story, co-written with his siblings Khaled and Sherin Diab, devolves into a socio-politically dubious and narratively nonsensical muddle, which may actually be a disguised blessing. The portrait of Palestinian identity it finally presents is so superficial and regressive that its saving grace is that it’s also very difficult to believe.

Proud “daughter of a hero,” 17-year-old Amira (Tara Abboud) knows she was conceived in this unconventional manner. Her freedom-fighter father Nawar married her mother Warda (Saba Mubarak) while already serving out his sentence in an Israeli prison. Husband...

The Singapore International Film Festival is to be held as an in-person event this year, after operating as an online-offline hybrid in 2020. It will open with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin’s “Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” and run Nov. 25- Dec. 5, 2021.

With a new program director, Thong Kay Wee the festival will be aligned as five new thematic strands: Foreground, Milestone, Standpoint, Undercurrent and Domain. It will also maintain its Singapore Panorama section dedicated to local works and its familiar Asian feature competition and Southeast Asian short film competition.

The competition includes: Palestinian director Mohamed Diab’s “Amira”; Thai director Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s “Anatomy of Time”; Aizhan Kassymbek’s “Fire”; Panah Panahi’s ”Hit The Road”; Chinese director Qiu Jiongjiong’s “A New Old Play”; Indian Oscar-contender “Pebbles,” by P.S. Vinothraj; Bangladesh’s Oscar contender “Rehana” by Abdullah Mohammad Saad; “Whether the Weather is Fine,” by Filipino director Carlo Francisco Manatad...

Egyptian Red Sea event marked its fifth edition from October 14-22.

Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, running in its namesake Egyptian Red Sea resort from October 14-22, got off to a memorable start this year when a fire broke out on the red carpet of the main festival plaza area on the eve of the opening ceremony.

By the next day, there was no sign of the near-disaster after hundreds of workers toiled through the night to repair the damage.

This freak accident would set the scene for an eventful edition, however, marked by guest deportations and cancellations, a...

Amid ongoing disruption in the Arab world’s unstable fest landscape, Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is staying the course and increasingly proving its mettle in promoting the cream of the region’s cinematic crop while also providing key support in nurturing new works.

El Gouna chief Intishal Al Timimi proudly points out that the fifth edition of the Oct. 14-22 event has secured eight high-profile features from Arab directors, most of which will be having their Middle Eastern premieres in the Egyptian Red Sea resort after bowing in Cannes and Venice.

They comprise French-Moroccan veteran Nabil Ayouch’s high-energy hip-hop drama “Casablanca Beats”; and two works from Lebanon: Mounia Akl’s dramedy “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” which targets Lebanon’s political malaise; and Ely Dagher’s “The Sea Ahead,” about a young woman who returns from Paris to Beirut and reconnects with the life she had left behind. There...

Documentary Exposure from The Babushkas Of Chernobyl director Morris gets its world premiere.

The 57th Chicago International Film Festival has unveiled its international competitions line-up, a roster that includes Venice Silver Lion winner The Power Of The Dog, Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers For The Stolen, and the world premiere of Holly Morris’s documentary Exposure.

The programme includes the international premiere of Franziska Stünkel’s The Last Execution. The festival runs October 13-24 and is the longest running competitive festival in North America.

The International Feature Competition line-up comprises: Péter Kerekes’s 107 Mothers (Slo-Czech-Ukr); Mohammed Diab’s Amira (Egy-Jor-uae-Saud...

Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy’s production shingle Film Clinic –– at Venice with “Amira,” Mohamed Diab’s drama about Palestinian children conceived behind bars with smuggled sperm –– is getting a financial boost that will triple its resources just as two new film and TV projects go into production.

Film Clinic is having an outstanding festival presence this year. They recently took the top Cannes Critics’ Week nod with Omar El Zohairy’s “Feathers,” and are now in the Venice Horizons section with “Amira” (pictured); it will soon be in Toronto with Hany Abu-Assad’s “Huda’s Salon.”

Now the company will have the financial muscle to take things to the next level thanks a new partner, government-affiliated outfit Ergo, which is taking a 49% stake in Film Clinic, while Hefzy and other partners will retain control of the remaining 51%.

Hefzy underlined that while the seed money comes from a government bank, the company is private,...