Egyptian Cinema Output Rises as Producers Demand Better Scripts

By Grace Kim

Egyptian cinema produced 67 feature films in 2023, up from 51 in 2022, according to figures from the Egyptian Chamber of Cinema Industry. Output fell to just 16 films a decade after the sector’s 112-film output in 1988. Egyptian cinema once dominated film production across the Arab world, but output has fallen dramatically from that late-20th-century height.

At the ninth El Gouna Film Festival, now wrapped in Egypt, leading producers and filmmakers from the country and wider region focused on turning abundant talent into films that audiences can find at home and abroad. The chamber’s figures show recovery, but not a return to the industry’s late-20th-century scale.

The script bottleneck

Veteran Syrian producer Mohamed Mashish has built a decades-long career in Egypt. For him, the recovery’s first problem is the screenplay.

“We need to have more time for development and scriptwriting,” he tells Variety. “We have all the industry components. But we don’t have scripts. So what can you do? I have a nice camera, a good DP, but we can’t do anything without good scripts.”

Mashish names the camera and the DP (director of photography), but treats both as tools subordinate to the script. In his assessment, production capacity cannot compensate for insufficient script development.

Mashish has also seen how platforms can extend the reach of Egyptian storytelling. He produced the 2016 drama “Grand Hotel,” the first Egyptian and first Arabic-language series to land on Netflix; the streamer released it internationally in 2018 as “Secret of the Nile.”

Streaming has also widened younger Egyptian filmmakers’ reference points, Mashish argues. Their online access now reaches beyond local culture.

“They’re more open-minded. They’re connected on the internet and everything,” he notes. “Because the platforms are available now, they’re watching more than just our culture. So they are more open and they are ready to move.”

That openness still needs production experience alongside it, Mashish says. “We have to bring the old generation and the new generation together,” he explains. “The new generation brings a different perspective, but cinema still needs experience, so we need to combine that new talent with the expertise that already exists in the industry.”

Streaming and a new audience

Egyptian director Hadi El Bagoury, whose 2016 “Hepta: The Last Lecture” became the highest-grossing romantic film in Egyptian cinema, sees streaming as one of the biggest opportunities for homegrown talent. Platforms now give filmmakers more places to show work while exposing them to directors, actors and directors of photography (DPs) working in different styles.

“You discover new stories, new directors, new genres,” he says. “You discover a lot more directors, DPs, actors and different styles.”

That exposure changes what audiences expect from Egyptian cinema, El Bagoury says. “They want new genres, they want original stories,” he says.

The Gulf test

The Gulf is a crucial market for Egyptian films, Mashish says, and Saudi Arabia’s theatrical expansion shows how quickly its audience has changed. At first, novelty made almost any film acceptable.

“At the beginning, when the Saudis started to open cinemas, they accepted everything because it was new,” he recalls. “It’s like, ‘I will go to the cinema, I will have popcorn, no matter the kind of movie I will watch.’”

That tolerance has disappeared as cinemas opened across Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf, Mashish says. International films now raise the bar for local releases.

“They are more selective than before,” he continues. “They will not accept just anything coming anymore. Because cinemas are now open in Saudi and in the Gulf, they are watching international cinema. So they demand this kind of quality.”

What travels

Lebanese producer and distributor Ziad Srouji, whose career spans film and television across the Arab world and whose credits include “Palestine 36,” says international success does not require Arab films to imitate foreign ones. Buyers, he argues, want stories with local specificity and a premise that travels.

“Specificity travels; generic does not,” he stresses. “International buyers aren’t looking for Arab films that imitate Western genre cinema, and they’re tired of films made only to explain the region to outsiders. They want stories rooted in a very particular world but driven by a premise anyone can grasp in one sentence.”

Srouji says the difficulty often begins after the initial idea. “A good idea gets you into the room. It doesn’t get you through production, and it certainly doesn’t get you to an audience.”

He identifies distribution planning as a structural weakness, including an absent sales agent, unprepared delivery materials and no positioning beyond a festival premiere. Delivery materials here are the materials prepared for buyers.

“Too many films reach the market without a sales agent attached early, without delivery materials ready and without a positioning strategy beyond a festival premiere,” Srouji says. “Sales and distribution need a strategy built from day one, not after the premiere.”

What does this change for Egyptian filmmakers?

El Gouna is among the regional festivals addressing that gap from development onward. CineGouna, its industry arm, launched the Egyptian Voices strand this year, selecting four Egyptian projects in development for tailored training in pitching (presenting a project), packaging (preparing its sale materials) and co-production (joint production).

El Bagoury argues that filmmakers need more direct, locally controlled routes to audiences. “We need more Egyptian-owned platforms, more theaters. Theaters that are cheap, accessible to all,” he says. “We need a lot of this so we don’t have to depend on anybody else. We need to show our films in our cinemas and on our platforms.”

Srouji sets a stricter test for an industry in which festival selections can precede sustainable careers. “A major festival selection is a launch, not a career,” he says. “Sustainable success is when your second film is easier to finance than your first.”

For Egyptian filmmakers, the practical change is that the proposals at El Gouna put four decisions earlier in the process:

• Give scripts more development time.
• Attach a sales agent early and prepare delivery materials and positioning before the premiere.
• Expand Egyptian-owned platforms and affordable, accessible theaters.
• Train projects in pitching, packaging and co-production.

The next test is whether El Gouna’s four selected projects can turn first premieres into financed second films, the outcome Srouji defines as sustainable success.