The characters, the story and the dialogue are both authentically Egyptian and universally relatable. The movie invites us to see ourselves in the lives of people we rarely hear of or pay attention towards. But we look at Yomeddine from a different angle.
We sat down with Abu Bakr “A.B.” Shawky with the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of his directorial debut and Desert Highway Pictures, the production company behind it, as quite the risky but fruitful business venture.
The buzz and the media storm surrounding the movie and everyone involved in it may have started to fade away, but what impact might it have in the future?
“I’m somebody who makes films. Somebody who tries to tell stories of underrepresented people. I’m interested in the underdog. I feel, in a way, I’m an underdog myself, you know, coming into the scene all of a sudden.”
Shawky’s education is unusual. He simultaneously earned a BFA in Directing from the Egyptian Higher Institute of Cinema and a BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. “I think as a filmmaker you have to be very well-learned about the world. You have to be very well-read about events around you,” said Shawky justifying his rather odd choice of majors. “Just being confined to the world of films was not enough,” he added.
Shawky also acquired an MFA in Film Production from New York University shortly after that. Before Yomeddine, he wrote and directed short films that participated in film festivals, in Egypt and abroad, garnering some of the most respectable awards a short film could receive.
One of those shorts was a documentary titled The Colony: Notes from a Leper Colony that was shot at Egypt’s Abu Zaabal leper colony. The real people Shawky met while shooting it are the basis for the characters and the stories of the movie. But to create the Yomeddine we know of today, Shawky had to make some difficult decisions. One of those decisions: create his own production company.
“I was trying to get around a technicality in Egypt. That technicality was, if you have a script you cannot just go and shoot it unless you have a production company that buys it from you, apparently,” Shawky elaborated. “That is a technicality I didn’t want to go into because first of all, I didn’t find anyone who wanted that movie at that point,” he added. “Also, I didn’t feel like I wanted to sign away the intellectual rights of Yomeddine to any company that I didn’t know, especially with a movie like that.”
This decision alone is enough of a testament to how much he believed in it. “If all it takes is to make a company, then I’ll do that, and I signed the rights to my company.” And so, inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s music which helped him grow the desire to steer away from the conventional, Shawky wanted to name his production company Thunder Road after the opening song of Springsteen’s breakthrough album Born to Run. “But, I was afraid that he would sue me.” Which is when he settled on Desert Highway Pictures.
Actor Rady Gamal on set for Yomeddine — Via Film Clinic Crew
Yomeddine’s funds were raised in methods alien to a movie screened all across Egypt and abroad. The movie has its own page on the world’s largest funding platform ‘Kickstarter’ which alone raised $22,254 from 71 backers who wanted to see it happen. Depending on how much one would pledge, the rewards ranged from thank you e-mails and personal drawings made by children from the leper’s colony kindergarten to donations made to the leper colony in Abu Zaabal and earning the credit of Associate Producer.
It was only later in the film-making process that the collaboration with Film Clinic (the production company behind well-known features such as Hepta, Clash (also known as Eshtebak) and Sheikh Jackson came about. “We didn’t have enough money to finish color and sound and all that. They saw the movie last year in Gouna, they came aboard and they helped us very much financially to finish Yomeddine but also to bring out the word on the movie,” said Shawky describing Film Clinic’s role. “They saw that this movie is different and it could go places. They were right.”
To the film industry in Egypt, Yomeddine could very well be viewed as a disruptive innovation. An independent film with a cast of mostly non-professional actors and an unusual story that not long ago struggled to find support from a production company has gone viral. The success the movie has accumulated will pave the way to more unconventional cinema in Egypt and hopefully reward us with a higher quality of films in the future that could find support from Egyptian production companies looking to realize the next Yomeddine.
The nomination for the most prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival has also proved in a way that movies from the Middle East screened abroad need not be about religious or political issues to succeed, but could provide an overlooked, original picture of Egypt worthy of everyone’s attention.
Shawky thinks that the Gouna Film Festival, where Yomeddine was screened and received favorably, will contribute in reshaping the movie industry in the region as well. “It’s not just a festival where it’s just like: oh, we’re going to make a big fancy festival,” said Shawky after commending the programmers of the festival for the amazing line-up of strong movies from all around the world.
When asked for any advice to give to aspiring filmmakers, Shawky said, “Don’t wait for other people to come and give you a script or don’t wait for other people to do something for you, it’s not going to happen until you do it yourself.”
