Egyptian Director Marwan Hamed on Crafting a Street Fight Scene With the Help of YouTube and Hyenas on Animal Planet: Rotterdam

Prolific Egyptian director Marwan Hamed shared insights into his career and his box-office hits during a special session with director Yousry Nasrallah (Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story; Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces) at the 55th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Monday evening.

IFFR 2026 features a retrospective celebrating Hamed and works spanning the past two decades, as well as the European premiere of El Sett, his biopic of Egyptian singer and actress Umm Kulthum, starring Mona Zaki (Flight 404) and Mohamed Farag (Voy!Voy!Voy!).

“Hamed has repeatedly set box office records in his home country — most recently with historical epic Kira & El Gin, which became the biggest financial success in Egyptian cinema history at the time of its release, bringing post-pandemic audiences back to theaters in droves,” said IFFR organizers. “From Hamed’s feature debut in 2006 with the screen adaptation of Alaa Al Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building,…