Sundance Film Festival announced selecting Egyptian screenwriter and producer Mohamed Hefzy as a jury member of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition that features films produced outside the USA.

Sundance Film Festival is the first stop on the 2022 agenda of the A-list festivals. Last Wednesday, the festival announced that this edition will be held virtually in the light of Covid -19 and its variants control measures taken in the USA.

Besides Hefzy, the World Cinema Dramatic Competition’s jury includes British director Andrew Haigh and La Frances Hui, Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Mohamed Hefzy is an award winning Egyptian screenwriter and producer who has written, produced, and co-produced nearly 40 feature films in Egypt, the US, the UK, and the Arab world along with TV series and TV shows. In 2006, he founded his company Film Clinic, one of the most major production companies in Egypt and the Arab world that is active in the international markets. He also founded Film Clinic Indie Distribution and co-founded MeeM Creative Circle.

In 2013, Screen International named him as the only Arab among 30 future leaders in film production. In 2016, he topped Variety’s list of “Ten names you need to know in the Arab Film Industry”. He was selected twice on the list of Variety’s 500 (2019-2020) as one of the most influential people working in the media industry worldwide. He was also named by the Hollywood Reporter and the Arab Cinema Center as the “Arab Cinema Personality of the Year” award. In June 2019, he became a member of the Academy Of Motions Pictures Arts And Sciences. In 2021, Hefzy received the Medal of “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres” from the French Embassy in Cairo.

Hefzy’s films joined numerous major film festivals and won over 100 international awards. In 2016, one of his productions (Clash) was chosen as the opening film of the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes International Film Festival. In the following year, he returned to Cannes as a co-producer of Yomeddine, this time in the official competition. In 2019, Sudancese film You Will Die at Twenty, co-produced by Hefzy, won Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film. In 2021, his film Feathers won the International Critics’ Week Grand Prize, and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes Film Festival. Furthermore, Hefzy’s film Amira won three awards at Venice International Film Festival.

.Film Clinic’s latest productions included film Souad that was officially selected at Cannes, Berlinale and Tribeca film festivals; Luxor that competed at Sundance Film Festival; Paranormal, first Egyptian Netflix original and film Ashab Wala A’az, the Arabic-language spin-off of the 2016 Italian hit Perfect Strangers. The new film production features Egyptian star Mona Zaki, Eyad Nassar, Nadine Labaki along with Adel Karam.

Hefzy is the former director of the Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentaries and Shorts, and was on the advisory board of Cairo International Film Festival from 2015 to 2017. He has also been a board member of the Egyptian Chamber of Cinema since 2013. In March 2018, Hefzy was assigned the responsibility of presiding over the 40th Cairo International Film Festival, making him the youngest president in the festival’s history”.

Hefzy is a film activist and offered several workshops and training programs, on film industry, conducted in cooperation with international organizations and institutes. He was a jury member previously at the BFI London Film Festival (2019), Venice International Film Festival (2018) Abu Dhabi International Film Festival (2011), Cairo International Film Festival (2010), as well as several other local and Arab festivals.