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Egypt’s Oscar submission “Voy! Voy! Voy!,” from director-writer-producer Omar Hilal, is a blackly comedian take a look at migration considered by way of the lens of a conman pretending to be visually impaired with a purpose to play within the Blind Football World Cup. The fast-paced, entertaining movie makes its Moroccan debut within the Special Screenings part of the Marrakech Film Festival. Following its September premiere in Egypt, it held the highest box-office spot for 2 months and did remarkably nicely within the Gulf states.
The title interprets as “Here I Come” in Spanish and is what the blind soccer gamers name out on the sector to keep away from collisions. But “Here I Come” might equally be the motto of its cheerily amoral protagonist Hassan (Mohamed Farrag), who’s keen to strive something to flee his financially-challenged, dead-end life as a safety guard.
Multi-hyphenate Hilal at all times wished to make a movie about migration. When he noticed a information merchandise a few group of Egyptians who fled to Europe within the guise of blind athletes, he thought, “This is the perfect vehicle to talk about the topic of immigration. A story that mixes real drama with dark humor; which is exactly what Egypt’s soul is: a melange of drama and humor. We express our sadness by laughing. This is very Egyptian.”
Omar Hilal
Courtesy of Film Clinic
Although the movie marks his function debut, Hilal is a seasoned — and award-winning — commercials director. Over a 20-year profession, his promoting spots proved notable for his or her clever humorousness, cinematic execution, highly effective characters and nice casting. These traits all carry over to “Voy! Voy! Voy!” Hilal notes: “Advertising was the perfect school for learning filmmaking, because it hones the craft of storytelling to the max…it makes you a good editor. You know what matters to the story, so you focus on getting that out of a scene.”
In addition to Farag, Hilal’s intelligent script attracted different high Egyptian performers together with Bayoumi Fouad and Nelly Karim. He says: “I wanted these big actors because I wanted it to reach a large audience…Nelly Karim was incredibly generous accepting this small role (versus her star power), but she championed the script, and went all in. A true artist cares only for good content, not the size of the role, or the money involved.”
The most difficult side of creating “Voy!,” Hilal confides, was “playing three roles as writer-producer-director. It was so much work, looking at absolutely every detail of the budget, and having to constantly sacrifice things the director wanted, because the producer doesn’t have the budget… the challenge here was that I had to edit my own desires sometimes before I even wrote them!”
Currently, Hilal has an concept in improvement for an enormous movie radically totally different in model and tone to “Voy!,” with a feminine lead. He says: “I will do fewer commercials now. Making a movie is very demanding, so I will choose any adverts with care.”
Following Marrakech, the movie will display screen on the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January. It will even have a restricted launch in New York City and Los Angeles, enjoying on the IFC Center in New York from Dec. 1-7 and the Laemmle Town Center in Encino from Dec. 8-12.
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