{"id":648467,"date":"2026-10-16T18:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T18:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/648467\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T18:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T18:38:10","slug":"safe-exit-director-mohammed-hammad-on-staying-true-to-his-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/648467\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Safe Exit’ Director Mohammed Hammad on Staying True to His Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMohammed Hammad<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSafe Exit\u201d received an Atlas Prize for Post-production at the 2025 Atlas Workshops of the Marrakech Film Festival before making its debut in the Panorama section of the 2026 Berlinale. The film is now poised for its national debut at the El Gouna Film Festival<\/a>, where it\u2019s competing in the Feature Narrative section. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is Hammad\u2019s long-awaited follow-up to his debut \u201cWithered Green,\u201d which bowed at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival and went on to win the best director prize at the Dubai Film Festival, as well as multiple awards closer to home in Cairo.<\/p>\n

\n\tHammad speaks to Variety about the challenges of getting his second film produced, and the satisfaction of screening in El Gouna.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow have you negotiated the difficulties of getting an independent film made in Egypt now?
\u201cSafe Exit\u201d is completely self-funded. We formed a new production company, Pariedolia Productions, and now we\u2019re trying to distribute the film through that company, which is a challenge. We\u2019ve chosen this model because many studios in Egypt tend to avoid this kind of film, especially given the topics it covers. Even getting the necessary permissions to shoot the film was very hard. But together with my producer Kholoud Saad I knew I needed to make this film, just like we made \u201cWithered Green.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMostafa Abdelazem, Mohammed Hammad, Dora Bouchoucha, Kholoud Saad, Mohammed El Sharqawy<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat about your co-producers?
The main co-producer is Dora Bouchoucha with Nomadis Images, from Tunisia. And Ibrahim El-Battout, one of the godfathers of independent cinema in Egypt, is also a co-producer. Ibrahim was with me from the beginning, also as an adviser, and I trust him completely. We worked on pre-production together, in conjunction with Kholoud; Ibrahim is one of Egypt\u2019s leading independent filmmakers, along with Khairy Beshara and Yousry Nasrallah, and he was with us throughout the shooting, every day.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWithered Green\u201d premiered in 2014. Can you talk about the challenges you\u2019ve faced getting \u201cSafe Exit\u201d off the ground?
After \u201cWithered Green.\u201d I began work on a film called \u201cBullets & Bread.\u201d It was a big project, a road movie, with Film Clinic as one of the producers. But after I finished the script [which received the Red Sea Lodge Award for an Arab Project in 2020], and I was scouting locations, the film was rejected by the censors. So my lovely project came to a halt after four years of work. After that, I couldn\u2019t write. But I called the great director Daoud Abdel Sayed, and he told me, start another project, write another film. At first, I told him, it\u2019s too hard, I\u2019m not good now. But after a month or so, I began to write \u201cSafe Exit,\u201d which took about another year to finish the script.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut you\u2019re not playing safe with \u201cSafe Exit\u201d \u2013 there are things in the film that might displease the censors here too.
Look, I need to be free as a filmmaker, to express my point of view and select topics I want to address. We had long discussions with the censorship office, and maybe this discussion impacted the film in a positive way. At the moment they\u2019ve given us permission to screen the film in festivals within Egypt, and El Gouna is our national premiere. I\u2019m so grateful for the support we\u2019ve gotten from the El Gouna Film Festival: this is Egypt, it\u2019s my country, and it\u2019s extremely important for me as well as my cast and crew that we\u2019re here. They believe in the film, and for us it\u2019s a great opportunity.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s talk about your characters. You have three very distinct main characters: a young Coptic man, Samaan, dealing with trauma; a homeless Muslim woman, Fatimah, who\u2019s seen more than her fair share of life\u2019s darker side; and Abdullah, an Islamic terrorist. Let\u2019s start with the Coptic element.
I love my characters, especially Samaan and Fatimah. They\u2019re pure, very pure. Regarding Coptic Christians, there are about 15 million in Egypt. Many of them are very successful and are integrated into society but of course they have specific issues given their minority status. But Samaan has another issue: his father was slaughtered in Libya by ISIS, and consequently he suffers from chronic PTSD. He\u2019s trying to cope with the world he lives in but most importantly he\u2019s trying to face himself and his fear. He can\u2019t deal with his feelings, which is the opposite of Fatimah, who\u2019s very talkative and spontaneous. She\u2019s illiterate and undocumented, and while they\u2019re very different, they\u2019re both on the margins of society.<\/p>\n

\n\tCan you describe how you worked with the actors?
Marwan Waleed, who stars as Samaan, is a relative newcomer who only appeared in one series. Noha Foad, who plays Fatimah, has been a close friend for years [she starred in Hammad\u2019s 2010 short \u201cPale Red\u201d]. We had nine months of rehearsal with the two of them.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you approach that rehearsal time?
Number one was getting them used to living together and talking together. Having them walk down the streets in Downtown Cairo, sitting down for a coffee, developing a friendship. Only after this did I talk to them about the story and their characters.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the most important thing for me in rehearsals is that they took place in the main locations where we shot. The last two months of rehearsals were in the actual locations, so the actors felt at home there.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe look of the film is quite different from \u201cWithered Green,\u201d which was also shot by Mohammed El Sharqawy.
I\u2019ve worked with Mohammad starting with our short films. We always work together. I like a tough look, a harsh look. It\u2019s very close to a natural look, using available light sources. With \u201cSafe Exit,\u201d there are more colorful scenes because Fatimah\u2019s character calls for colors. They act as a contrast to Samaan\u2019s routine, his pallid room and his workspace. I\u2019m drawn to this harsh texture, and \u201cSafe Exit\u201d is a very tough picture, but we also put some softness in certain scenes, especially with Fatimah.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite its toughness, you\u2019ve managed to insert some humor into a very serious story.
I believe in comic relief, because the film is very dark. Maybe we can put some smiles on an audience, especially with Fatimah, but also with Samaan, who\u2019s like a robot.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you see that you\u2019ve developed between \u201cWithered Green\u201d and now?
I\u2019m very happy with \u201cWithered Green\u201d and I\u2019m very happy with \u201cSafe Exit,\u201d but \u201cWithered Green\u201d was me at that time of life and \u201cSafe Exit\u201d is me now. I don\u2019t know about the third film [laughs]. But what I learned is how to make people feel entertained. Because with cinema it\u2019s still important to be entertaining. Even though \u201cSafe Exit\u201d is dark, and addresses a very serious, very sensitive topic, we can still make part of it entertaining!<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mohammed Hammad\u2019s \u201cSafe Exit\u201d received an Atlas Prize for Post-production at the 2025 Atlas Workshops of the Marrakech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[291680,146,85,46,291681],"class_list":["post-648467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-el-gouna-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mohammed-hammad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}