A. B. Shawky

Egyptian cinema, about lepers and disinherited. Sounds like box office poison. However, Abu Bakr Shawky has shown with his first feature film that these issues can be dealt with in a way full of humanity and capable of capturing the viewer’s attention without prejudice.

Son of an Egyptian father and an Austrian mother. Abu Bakr Shawky learned to love cinema thanks to his mother, who took him to see movies. He especially enjoyed independent cinema, and declares himself a great admirer of the Coen brothers , but he is also familiar with Iranian cinema. He studied film and political science in Egypt, and then moved to New York to continue his studies.

Before undertaking his first feature film, he worked on making three documentary shorts, The Colony , Things I heard on Wednesdays and Martyr Friday . Precisely the first of them, which takes place in the leper colony of Abu Zaabal in the north of Cairo, was the one that served as inspiration for her debut in the feature film Yomeddine, which is still anchored in reality, when describing the tribulations of a man who has suffered from leprosy, which has left him with the consequences of his deformed body and scars on his face. In the company of an orphaned Nubian boy, he will embark on a journey that is not only physical but emotional, in search of his family, which also means accepting himself as he is, and also his other family, that is, the disinherited of the Earth with whom he lives. He has been making friends throughout his life.

Yomeddine , which was selected to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, was taking shape over several years, in which Shawky was able to mature his idea and give it shape, adding many real elements to the plot, many anecdotes and events that he learned about in his shoots in Egypt. To obtain financing for a film that was not easy to sell, his wife Dina Emam helped him with his efforts. Hiring him as an adviser on Arab affairs on the Amazon series on the 9/11 attacksThe Looming Towerwas also very useful, as it allowed him to make many contacts that would later be very useful.

The title of the film, which can be translated as “Doomsday”, appeals to an idea that runs through Shawky’s cinema, the equal dignity of people above differences of sex, social situation, nationality or religion, which it will be verified precisely the day in which God judges all men equally. And he explains that “I chose a leprosy patient for the leading role of Beshay, instead of a professional actor, with the intention of giving both the character and the person the opportunity to define themselves by their humanity and not by their disease.” . The idea was not to observe this world from the outside but to look beyond the appearance to focus on the person. Despite the apparent harshness that the film may contain, Yomeddinetreats the subject in a light-hearted way, highlighting Beshay’s disposition in the face of misfortune.”