A Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) supported film has been picked as Egypt’s official entry in the foreign-language Oscar race.
Mohammad Khan’s Factory Girl, which explores class differences in Egypt, won two awards in Diff’s Muhr competition last year.
Known as one of the leading lights in realistic cinema, Khan’s last film, In the Heliopolis Flat (Fi Shaket Masr Al Gedeeda), about a music teacher who goes in search of her own teacher and ends up finding something else, was shown at Diff in 2007, and was also Egypt’s official entry into the Oscars that year. He is well known for taking on simple, everyday life stories and telling them in a fantastical way.
Factory Girl follows the story of Hiyam, a factory worker who falls in love with one of her supervisors. When a pregnancy test is found, she is suspected, and is then rejected by her family.
Yasmin Raes, who plays Hiyam, told tabloid! in an earlier interview that she was attracted by the strength of the character.
“She’s someone who’s not easily broken even if faced by what the society dictates should be the way she should live her life,” said the actress, speaking through a translator. “I think that’s an important role for a woman to have, especially in Egypt today.”
Raes, who was picked from 200 other hopefuls, had to shave her head for the role, and says she did it without a second thought.
“Hair will grow back anyway, but you don’t get to play such a role every day,” she says. “Actresses will retire or die, but the films they do will stay forever. For me that’s important.”
