Mahmoud Hemeida wins Best Actor Award at Kazan Film Festival

CAIRO – 11 September 2018: Famed Egyptian star Mahmoud Hemeida won the Best Actor Award at the Kazan International Muslim Film Festival for his role in the Egyptian movie "Photocopy".

"Photocopy" represented Egypt in the festival’s official competition. The film narrates the story of an elderly man who, upon his retirement, decides to open a photocopying shop. He begins to re-discover life, his love for his neighbour and the people around him.

The movie stars beside Hemeida, Sherine Reda, Farah Youssef, Aly Tayeb and Ahmed Dash, among others. It was written by Haitham Dabbour and directed by Tamer Ashry.

"Photocopy" premiered at the first edition of GFF, and won El-Gouna Golden Star Award for Best Arabic Feature Narrative Film. The movie was also screened at the fifth International Arab Cinema Meetings in Marseille on November 22.

"Photocopy" was shown as the closing film in the Arabian Cinema Week in New York City on November 23. The film was also screened in Cairo International Film Festival on November 24.

Egyptian journalist and "Photocopy" scriptwriter, Dabbour, previously stated in an interview with Egypt Today that he chose to present a love story between an elderly couple because this type of love stories “has not been well-presented in the Egyptian cinema.”

The script was nominated for the Sawiris Cultural Awards. Dabbour explained that he worked a lot on the script to develop it before reaching the final version. He began writing it in 2013 and finished a year later.

"Photocopy" tackles issues and problems facing the elderly, topics that are rarely addressed in Egyptian cinema. “The main challenge that faced me while writing such a different movie is to maintain high artistic sides and values and at the same time remain amusing for the audience, so they would not get bored,” Dabbour explained.