Still-shot of Fawzy Saleh's award-winning documentary Geld Hay (Living Skin)
A young Egyptian filmmaker, Fawzi Saleh, has a won a grant from The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) to develop the script for his debut feature film, Ward Masmoum (Poisoned Roses). The script in progress has also won the Sanad fund from the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
Ward Masmoum is scheduled to start shooting next April and tells the story of a young Egyptian man from a poor neighbourhood who commits suicide days before the revolution.
The film explores the reasons behind his suicide by relaying the lives of different characters who are dissatisfied with life and on a constant search for love and a better future in a country surrounded by corruption, classicism, and a police state.
The non-linear film takes place over a day and is adapted from the novel Worood Samma Le Sakr (Poisoned Roses for Sakr) by the Egyptian writer Ahmed Zaghloul El Sheity.
Ward Masmoum is Saleh’s debut feature film. Saleh previously made the film Geld Hay (Living Skin), about children working in Cairo’s tanneries. It won “Best Narrative Film by a New Director from the Arab World” at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival and “Best First Documentary” at the Festival International du Cinéma Méditerranéen de Tétouan.
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