2022 Winners & Shortlists

Write a short summary of what happens in the film

One Hell of a Ride is an Egyptian drug awareness film that depicts the sad and emotional journey of drug abuse. A young teenager is strapped on a rollercoaster, ecstatic and screaming in joy during the first half of the film - until at one moment he looks worn out, tired, regretful, broken and bruised. In the end, the rollercoaster metaphor hits the viewer with the reality of drug addiction.

Cultural / Context information for the jury

The film is universal in its core as drug addiction is a global problem. However, with Egypt drug addicts mainly being teenagers, we needed to find an activity (the rollercoaster ride) and the cast (young adolescents) to star in the film.

Tell the jury about the casting process.

The film was shot in its entirety on a rollercoaster. And we knew that this would be extremely unhealthy for the actors due to hours of excessive dizziness, nausea, headaches, vomit, tiredness and the constant gravitational forces that move the body in countless directions. So, we needed to cast two sets of twins for each of our films. A set of female twins and male twins. One twin acted out the ecstasy of drug abuse while the other acted out the agony and reality of it. This was extremely challenging as we needed twins that were teenagers (to fit the target) and that could be incredible actors (to push the message across). Thankfully we did, and everyone came out of the shoot unscathed.