The Egyptian documentary film Lift like a girl Director Mayyy Zayed is part of the official selection of 42th Edition of the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) to be held from November 19 to 28, 2020. It will be screened in the first Middle East and North Africa.
Turned over a four -year period, Lift like a girl Follows Zebiba, 14, a weightlifting in the process of realizing her dream of becoming world champion.
Zebiba, who trains daily, follows the traces of her coach’s daughter, Nahla Ramadan, the best weightlifting in Egypt and former world champion. His coach, Captain Ramadan, has spent the last twenty years training young girls in weightlifting in the streets of Alexandria.
Commenting on the selection of the film, M.Mohamed Hefzy, producer, screenwriter and president of the CIFF, said that after watching Lift like a girlthe artistic direction of the festival did not hesitate for a moment to invite it to participate in this 42nd edition, not only because of the importance of the documentary film as gender, which was unfortunately underrepresented in previous editions, but above all because it was convinced that Lift like a girl is one of the most important Arab films of the year 2020.
Mr. Hefzy admitted that some could be surprised by the selection of a documentary film to represent Egyptian cinema in international competition for the second consecutive year, after the film’s participation Let’s Talk by Marianne Khoury during the 41th edition, which had also won the public price Youssef Cherif Rizkallah, But he is convinced that this astonishment will turn into admiration during the screening of the film next November.
For her part, the director of the film Mayyy Zayed said she was proud and delighted with the selection of Lift like a girl to the international competition of the CIFF. “Although I am very happy that my film participated in the 45th edition of the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) in September, the fact remains that it is more important for me than the film is seen by the greatest possible number of Egyptian spectators and seeing them interact with the film via the prestigious screen of the Cairo Film Festival,” she added.
According to Mayyy Zayed, his film explores the idea of “dream” and the way people try to make it in any way possible, noting that all the girls who appear in the film have won medals at the regional and world championships as well as to the Olympic Games.
Mayyy Zayed revealed that the idea of Lift like a girl He came in 2003 after the victory of Nahla Ramadan in the World Halterophilia Championship. “This inspiring story was very interesting for me. I wanted to know more about her and know where these girls find the strength to realize their dreams in a sport dominated by men. In 2014, I went to visit the site where the girls train, in front of the port of Alexandria, where Captain Ramadan spent his life training and preparing his daughter Nahla, and many others, to become local, regional and global champions of weightlifting. This is where the six -year course of the film began, including four devoted to filming and more than a year and a half to editing. ”
Mayye Zayed is a director and producer. She studied communications engineering at the University of Alexandria before changing careers to become a filmmaker after having participated in a film workshop organized by the Jesuit Cultural Center in Alexandria in 2009.
She received the Fulbright scholarship to study cinema at Wellesley College in the United States in 2012, which allowed her to make a foray into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied new techniques of the production of documentaries.
She began her career in 2010 as an assistant director on the set of Hawi from Ibrahim el-Biout. In 2013, among five other directors, she participated in the writing, realization and production of The Mice Rooma collaborative feature film presented as a first at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2013. She co -founded the Cinematographic Production Company Rufy’s Films based in Alexandria and then founded Cléo Media, an independent production and distribution company.
The director has several short films to her credit, some of which participated in international festivals, of which A Stroll Down Sunflower Lanea short film that was screened at La Berlinale in 2016 and won the prize for the best experimental film in the 2019 edition of the Sharjah Film Platform.
In addition to her work as a director and producer, Mayyy Zayed worked as director of photography on the feature film Veve of the German director Simon Mukali, which took place in Kenya in 2014.
She was also credited as a feature film I have a picture. Film No. 1001 In The Life of the Oldest Extra in the World Who won the El Gouna star for the best Arab documentary film in 2017, the Jury Prize for documentary film at the National Egyptian Film Festival in 2018 and the Prix for Best Documentary Film of the Sharjah Film Platform in 2019.
Press release
