The 48-Hour Film Project Winners

In case you you’ve been living under a rock, the 48-Hour Film Project is a worldwide competition where a crew has 48 hours to create a film containing certain elements. A panel of judges then seletct the best films from each city; the winners from each year are announced at the Awards Ceremony at Filmapalooza 2016, and the top 10 films of the year from all around the world will have the opportunity to have their short screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. To make the competition even more exciting, a couple of elements are required: the movie has to be 4-7 minutes long, with a certain character, line, and prop included, otherwise the team will be disqualified. The elements vary from city to city but in each one, all the teams have the same required elements.

This year the requirements for Cairo were: having a flip-flop in one of the scenes, a character named Mofeed/Mofeeda Gamil who works as a tailor, and the phrase “feloosi fein.” Each team is given a certain theme/genre that they are required to follow as well.

Karim Sedrak and his team, Birdrock, were the winners of this year's best film award in Cairo, with their movie Battalion 313, and will be representing Cairo at the international Filmmapalooza event. “On the night of the 8^th of October, 1973, at the east bank of the Suez Canal, Battalion 313 set an epic resistance in the face of deadly and swift air strikes by enemy forces. They managed to survive it with all its members and rescue more than 150 injured soldiers in the field. This is dedicated to the lives of those heroes,” the team told us.

They explained that they wanted to create something that relates to Egypt since it is a worldwide competition and they wanted to stand out. “At first, the genre of movie was horror and, after discussing it, we opted to pick another genre and try our luck, which was a risk because we could’ve received a musical genre, however, what we had to create was a historical film,” they said. Birdrock also won best sound design, and best use of line, costumes, and character. Their crew of about 20 people consists of Karim Sedrak as the Director, M. Abdel Bary as the Assistant Director, Mohamed Osama as the Director of Photography, Rafik Morcos as the Scriptwriter, and Aline Francis as the Makeup Artist. “Expect a great twist toward the end of the movie,” Sedrak reveals to us.

The first and second runners up, respectively, were El Naggar Productions with their film, Mannequin, and Los Pollos Hermandos with their film, Expiry Date. Mannequin also won the best editing award. 

Metamorphosis were the winners of this year’s competition for the best directing, best editing, and best supporting actress award. Abdelrahman and his team’s theme was “holiday.” “Even though we entered the competition planning to create something psychedelic, we accepted the challenge to create something out of our usual area of expertise,” Malak told us. Their movie, The Parachute, was created to show how people are not easily able to achieve what they want. “We created this film to portray how Egyptians are not always able to reach their dreams easily because of several obstacles, especially with photographers and filmmakers. Whenever a filmmaker wants to shoot a scene in Egypt, they have to have a permit, however the process takes forever,” she explained. So, if you’ve missed it this time, don’t worry, there’s always next year!

You can find out more about the yearly project on their website here.