As child, film director Ahmed Abdalla was swept up with a passion for photography. No pixels for him; just good old-fashioned film and developing fluid. His recent exhibition ‘Deceiving Time’ made headlines.
Abdalla spoke to the Egyptian Mail about his career and his latest project.
“Fear is the hardest thing for any artist to bear,” he said.
“We always worry about feedback. We worry about the quality of our work. We doubt our skills,” he said.
“Needless to say, part of this is healthy and can push our creativity forward. At other times, fear can paralyse us as artists. We spend months and years in constant worry. We end up doing nothing.”
The director said that he had decided from day one to ignore his fears and do his best to deliver the best he can.
“Of course, mistakes will happen, but we learn and move on.”
Egyptian-born Abdalla is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer, associated with the new wave of independent cinema in the Arab world.
“I’m proud of making different films. Some of them are not traditional Egyptian cinema. I’m proud to be working in alternative or independent cinema. I’m not into labelling any film movement, but I am happy to be part of this wave. Some films are still fresh after many years,” he said.
Abdalla recorded the history of the suburbs and cities where he grew up and lived as in Heliopolis (2009) or Alexandria in Microphone (2010).
“Working on such films allowed me to dive deeper into Cairo’s common neighbourhoods, familiar or unfamiliar to me, re-discovering what I know about myself, my relationships, and my city,” he said.
He has won best director in regional and local festivals in Dubai Film, Cannes. He holds a Golden Antigone Prize from the Cinema Film Festival in Montpellier, a Golden Tanit Prize in Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, and the Golden Tulip from the Istanbul International Film Festival. His films have been showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival, the London BFI, the Singapore International Film Festival, and the São Paulo International Film Festival.
Abdalla went on to say that his role model are among the emerging filmmakers.
“They deliver new and fresh cinema, breaking the norms and teaching about new ways of storytelling.”
On his first photo exhibition ‘Deceiving Time’, Abdalla said he worked with Tintera in Cairo for eight months printing and reprinting so many pictures until they made the final selection of 22 photographs.
“But the collection dates from 2010 and 2021. ‘Deceiving Time’ is about our memories and how to revisit specific moment.
“I tried to recreate them using rejected and unused photos from one location or one incident and then rendering a new photograph catching the true vibes of this long last moment,” he said.
The idea he wanted to focus on is that when we shoot something we take ten different photos, but in the end we pick the one we like and eliminate the others.
When he started working on the project, he wondered about the pictures we reject only to discover that they are part of our relationship with this moment, which is why he re-created those moments from different angles and merging them into one picture.
He is currently working on a new project — working title ‘19B’.
“I wrote it during lockdown in 2020 and now we are at the pre-production stage, soon we will be announcing the cast.
“The film is produced by Mohamed Hefzy. I worked with him on Microphone and Rags and Tatters.”
