2019 Winners & Shortlists

Write a short summary of what happens in the film.

The film begins with the familiar faces of supporting celebrities, with the lead actress arguing with the director over changes in her role and script, introducing the title 'Agent #10.' After the camera starts rolling, the scene begins in a foreign city, and amidst showers, the lead actress approaches two men standing under an umbrella. Turning around to reveal themselves, our hero comes to light. Starring in his new role, and to the audience's surprise, the hero appears to be Ahmed Hegazy, an Egyptian National-team football player. Through overdramatized acting skills and the mysterious mood, Hegazy indulging the role of 'Schmit' the agent, receives the device and responds with an obviously improvised line. As we hear the director shouting 'cut!' with exaggerated satisfaction, the lead actress seems distressed and outraged. The film concludes with a message of, 'those who can represent us in Russia, can represent us anywhere.'

Cultural/Context information for the jury

For Egyptians, Ramadan is all about television series. Anticipated by millions every year, the celebrities take over the screens of a nation as the stars of the season, making it the peak of television viewership. Bombarded by advertisements, series and shows, communication makes its way to viewers in an unparalleled manner. This year; however, was different. Egypt was taking part in the World Cup in Russia after 28 years, with the tournament scheduled to kick-off on the last day of Ramadan. With advertisements getting lost amidst the hundreds of television-series and excessive communication across all categories, the obvious trend was either to focus on a Ramadan insight, or football-based scene. To stand out, one would need to abuse the nation's love for football, television-series and Ramadan by creating the perfect fusion of showcasing another side of their 2018 stars.

Tell the jury about the casting process.

To ensure the realism of the series-like scenes, we needed real celebrities. Using the familiar faces of Egyptian television supporting actors, we were already half way there, matching each to the genre they usually star in. The real challenge was our main heroes. Using football players whose only experience behind the camera was on the field, in football context or advertising for a product/service, we needed to find the players who had certain attributes that were relevant to specific genres. Despite their poor and non-existing acting skills, appearance was key. Given Ahmed Hegazy's lack of expression and foreign-like facial details, all he needed was the mysterious coat and the dark-exchange location, to appear like most peculiar agents dominating the screens do. Pushing him to exaggerate his performance, the mixture of his appearance and poor acting skills delivered the perfect scene our viewers were familiar to; with a twist of course.