CIFF organizes special seminar to honor “El Ekhteyar” series cast

Cairo International Film Festival organized special seminar to honor “El Ekhteyar” ( The Choice) series cast and to highlight more the procedures of making this highly popular patriotic series.

“This seminar is so important because it is about “ El Ekhteyar” ( The Choice) series which made a radical change in Ramadan drama” CIFF head Mohamed Hefzy said.

Hefzy said that CIFF decided to honor “ El Ekhteyar”  makers who are the director Peter Mimi, the script writer Hany Sarhan and the superstar Eyad Nassar.

“ El Ekhteyar created a new genre in Ramadan drama, it is a political, action and thriller series” Hefzy said.

Peter Mimi said that El Ekhteyar is not just a series it is like a paper that documents important stages of Egypt’s history.

“We had a challenge to make the audience accept “El Ekhteyar” as a docu-drama series” Mimi said.

Eyad Nassar spoke about the role of cinema and drama series like “ El Ekhteyar” in combating terrorism and destructive thoughts.

“After searching and studying to make two parts of “ El Ekhteyar” series I discovered one conclusion that god protected Egypt from a lot of conspiracies” Mimi said.

Mimi explained that the two parts of “El Ekhteyar” are not separate from each other because the role of Egyptian army and security forces complete each other.

“Before portraying  great martyr Mohamed Mabtouk in  El Ekhteyar I promised his family that people will see him the true champion he really was” Nassar said.

Nassad added that if we considered Ekhteyar as a war series then it was a real war against terrorism.

Mimi said that after El Ekhteyar part one, Karim Abdel Aziz told him he wants to join part two.

He added that Abdel Aziz was so supportive to me and enthusiastic to perform his role.

“El Ekhteyar was the political, military and realistic series that documented the last 10 years in Egypt which were full of radical events” Mimi said.

Mimi recounted that El Ekhteyar is not just a series it is a national project in every sense of the word.

 “I discovered that El Ekhteyar series was not influential on the Egyptian side only, its influence extended to the rest of the Arab world” Nassar said.

Nassar explained that El Ekhteyar series was influential in the Arab world because we all suffer from the same pain.

At the end of the seminar Egypt’s Minister of Culture Ines Abdel Dayem came on CIFF stage and honored “El Ekhteyar” series cast.