Egyptian/Luxembourgish director Adolf El Assal competes with his film project "Hooped" within the Berlinale Talents, among 10 projects competing to receive huge production funds.
This marks El Assal’s second time to join the Berlinale Talents since 2006.
Berlinale Talents is a talent development programme that explores the how and why of movie making. Since 2003, it has grown to become a one-of-a-kind forum for film professionals and cinema lovers alike, featuring public talks, discipline-specific workshops, project development Labs and networking events with more than 9,000 alumni from 150+ countries.
Adolf El Assal has started the casting for " Hooped" by signing with two Arab stars of European fame.
The first is the Lebanese/German star Kida Khodr Ramadan, who is famous for the German TV series 4 Blocks and won the Best Actor award at the German TV Awards.
The second star is Tua El Fawwal, who is considered the first Egyptian actress to win the German Acting Award for the youth category, and gained fame for being the first hijab-wearing actress in Germany.
HOOPED follows the schemes of the 17-year-old aspiring entrepreneur and basketball whiz Adam, that take him on a coming-of-age odyssey from Luxembourg to Canada to Egypt, burning bridges wherever he goes.
Through Adolf El Assal’s production company Wady Films, his film PAMFIR the Best Film award at the International Critics’ Week Competition at the 44th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF).
Additionally, the film received five awards at the 5th Kinokolo Awards in Ukraine, namely; the Best Feature Film, Opening of the Year Award, Best Director and Best Script awards to director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, and the Best actor Award to Oleksandr Yacentyuk.
The events of PAMFIR take place in Western Ukraine, on the eve of a traditional carnival when Pamfir returns to his family after months of absence.
Their love is so unconditional that when his only child starts a fire in the prayer house. Pamfir has no other choice but to reconnect with his troubled past to repair his son's fault. He will be taken on a risky path with irreversible consequences.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Adolf El Assal spent his early life between the UAE, UK, France, and Luxembourg. In 2008, El Assal received his Bachelor degree in Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University in the UK. In 2011, he directed the award-winning short film LA FAMEUSE ROUTE, which took part in more than 20 film festivals around the world and received five awards. His short film MANO DE DIOS received two awards within its world tour in film festivals. In 2012, he produced and directed his first feature film LES FAMEUX GARS, which he successfully distributed in the French-speaking countries. El Assal’s second feature film SAWAH had a very solid international film festival run with over 100 festival selections, reaping 34 awards. His upcoming feature film HOOPED is slated for 2023. Adolf El Assal has directed five episodes of the Belgian comedy series BARAKI that was aired in 2021.
Adolf El Assal is also a Berlinale Talents as well as an EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneur) and Screen Leaders Alumni. Adolf is a European Film Academy member and he is working on the creative part of the Luxembourg pavilion at the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
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