They have been selected to participate in the Berlinale development programme during the festival's 2023 edition.
Berlinale Talents has selected three Egyptian filmmakers for the 2023 edition. It is a talent development programme that explores the how and why of movie making.
From February 18-23, 2023, Berlinale Talents will welcome 204 selected filmmakers to Berlin: for a community comprising 68 countries the six days of exchanging experiences along the theme “You Must Be Joking: Humour In Serious Times” are a ticket to join what is one of the largest worldwide film communities, with soon to be 10,000 Berlinale Talents alumni.
The 204 Talents were chosen from 3,295 applications from 125 countries. The final selection this year includes filmmakers from countries that have rarely been represented at Berlinale Talents before (Myanmar, Palestine, Nepal, Mongolia, Lesotho, Bangladesh, Costa Rica and for the first time: Saint Lucia).
Egyptian producer, director and screenwriter Adolf El-Assal joined the Berlinale Talents with his new feature film project Hooped.
Born in Alexandria, El-Assal grew up in Dubai, London and Luxembourg. After graduating with a master’s degree in filmmaking from Kingston University in the United Kingdom, he worked as a producer on Divizionz (2008) which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to be selected at over 100 festivals.
Living between Brussels and Cairo, the director and cinematographer Sameh Alaa presents his new short animated fiction project titled The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with My Father. The 20-mins project participates in the Short Form Station 2023 at Berlinale.
Alaa studied basic filmmaking techniques for two years at the Academy of Cinema Arts and Technology. He worked on various commercials and feature films before moving to Europe. He received his master’s degree at EICAR Film School in Paris.
Egyptian producer Kesmat El-sayed joined the Talents under the German filmmaker’s section. “I am an Egyptian producer currently based in Berlin with a focus on creative documentaries from the Arab and African region by artists from the region,” the Berlinale Talents website quotes El-sayed.
Also a co-founder of Seera Films, an independent production company which she launched at the Berlinale 2012, El-sayed focuses on the production of creative feature documentaries and narrative films that have social relevance and are artistically crafted to transcend national and cultural boundaries.
