Reda, ezz garnered the best actress and actor award at ACA

CAIRO - 13 October 2018: The famed Egyptian star Ahmed Ezz received the best actor award while the star Sherine Reda received the best actress award from Arabian Cinema Awards on Friday.

Ezz garnered the award on his dazzling role in "El Khaleya" ( The Cell) movie while Reda was awarded on her role in "Photocopy" movie.



“El Khaleya” achieved not only the highest revenues in 2017 but is also the highest grossing movie in Egyptian cinema history. The movie made about LE 55 million.

The movie highlights the continuous efforts exerted by security forces to combat terrorism, as well as the obstacles and the sufferings they face as a result of such tough work. The movie focuses on a special operations officer played by Egyptian megastar Ahmed Ezz.

He works to stop more than one terrorist operation and arrests various terrorist cells. “El-Khaleya” stars besides Ezz, Samer el-Masrie, Mohamed Mamdouh and Amina Khalil. The movie’s script is written by Salah el-Geheny, while Tarek el-Erian wrote the story and directed the movie. The film includes a duet song between famous singers Assala and Mahmoud Elesseily. “El-Khaleya” is considered a high-budget action movie.

Amr Salah, an officer from the special operations sector in the Ministry of Interior, was killed on October 20 during confrontations between police forces and terrorists in an oasis in the Western Desert. He had participated in “El-Khaleya,” training Ezz and fellow actors on police exercises shown in the movie.

Salah also appeared in a few scenes in the film as an actor. He appeared in one scene changing clothes in the locker room, another in a raid, the scene with the armored vehicle, as well as in most of the scenes with Ezz in the camp.

" Photocopy" 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 neighbor and the people around him.

The movie stars beside Reda Mahmoud Hemeida, 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 on 2017, 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 Friday, 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.