H.H. Pope Tawadros II honored the directors and stars of the film The Brink of Dreams within the activities of the 4th LOGOS Coptic Youth Forum (Back to Roots).

This comes after the film received the L’Œil d’or (the Golden Eye Award) for Best Documentary Film at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. 300 youths from around Egypt are participating in this year’s edition of the 4th LOGOS Coptic Youth Forum (Back to Roots).

It is worth noting that the LOGOS Coptic Youth Forum has been accustomed to honoring many prominent public figures over the past years, including Dr. Magdi Yacoub and Engineer Naguib Sawiris.

Produced by Felucca Films and directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, The Brink of Dreams marks the first Egyptian film ever to win this award at the festival.

It is noteworthy that 22 documentary films were nominated for the award in all the festival’s categories and programs, including films by salient directors such as Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, and Claire Simon.

The Brink of Dreams landed its premiere during the official competition of the Critics’ Week that was attended by the film’s cast and crew including directors Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir alongside the girls of Panorama El Barsha Troupe.

The film received a wide audience acclaim after its premiere, in addition to critics’ who wrote about the film in Le Monde, Variety, and Screen Daily.

The film toured a number of prestigious film festivals around the world including; Biarritz Film Festiva, États généraux du film documentaire in France, DokuFest in Kosovo, Afrika Film Festival in Germany, and der NEUE HEIMAT film in Austria.

The Brink of Dreams is directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir and produced by Felucca Films. The film stars Panorama El Barsha troupe; Magda Masoud, Haidi Sameh, Monika Youssef, Marina Samir, Myriam Nassar, Lydia Haroun, and the founder of the troupe, Youstina Samir.

The events of The Brink of Dreams take place in a remote village in southern Egypt, in which a group of girls rebel by forming an all-female street theatre troupe.

They dream of becoming actresses, dancers, and singers, challenging their families and villagers with their unexpected performances.

Shot over four years, The Brink of Dreams follows them from childhood to womanhood, facing the most crucial choices of their lives and topics such as early marriage, domestic violence and girls’ education, while they have dreams that exceed the sky.

The film expresses the Egyptian identity and the dreams of Egyptian youth. The village of Al-Barsha in Minya Governorate hosted the film’s crew for many years.

The most recent work of directors Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir includes the short fiction Fakh (The Trap), which premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and received a special mention at the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) in the same year.

Their feature-length documentary Happily Ever After premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2016, one of the most important documentary film festivals around the world.

The Brink of Dreams is produced by Felucca Films and its crew including; line producer Mohamed Khaled, assistant directors Hamees El Balshy and Doha Hamdy, DOPs Dina El Zeneiny, Ahmed Ismael, and Ayman El Amir, sound recording by Mostafa Shaaban, Sameh Nabil, Osama Goubail, and Shadwa Ali, music by Ahmad El Sawy, and editors Veronique Lagoarde-Segot, Ahmed Magdy Morsy, Ayman El Amir and Nada Riyadh. The PR in Egypt and the Middle East is handled by Carrots (Marwa El Sawy). Nada Hossam is the actresses’s stylist, in collaboration with Mystic, La blanca, Cache, Indira, and Rana Ghazy Jewellery.