Tamer El Said

Tamer El Said (Arabic: تامر السعيد, born 1972) is an Egyptian filmmaker.

Tamer El Said was born in August 1972 in Cairo, Egypt.

His father Ahmed El Said wrote for the 70s famous children's radio program, A Song and A Tale.

In spring 1991, El Said was detained for six weeks by State Security after participating in a students' strike in a demonstration against the participation of the Egyptian troops in the First Gulf War.

Between 1994 and 2004, El Said wrote, produced and directed numerous award-winning shorts and documentaries including On a Monday (2004) and Take Me (2004).

He studied Film Directing at the High Institute of Cinema, graduating 1998 with Honourable Mention, and received his diploma in 2002.

After graduating, he worked for a couple of years as 1st AD on some of Egypt's bigger feature films, then spent a year directing high end commercials while teaching at both the High Institute of Cinema and the Actor's Studio in Cairo.

In 2002 he took on the role of Senior Producer and Artistic Consultant for Nile Productions, moving across to Hot Spot in Dubai in 2003.

His time as Senior Producer at Hot Spot saw the company expand dramatically, producing 250 documentaries in 58 countries, and winning several international awards.

He wrote, produced and directed numerous films including Take Me (2004), an award-winning documentary about five friends who unwittingly became political prisoners in Morocco, and the short film On a Monday (2005) on an old married couple who rediscover their relationship.

The 10-minute fiction, produced in Egypt in 2005, was screened at more than 51 festivals in 24 countries, and scooped nine international and local awards.

It is on when love emerges in the details in this innovatively simple day-in-the-life story of a married couple who one random Monday discover each other anew due to a change in routine.

On a Monday received several prizes at international film festivals including the prize for Best Short Film in Cairo, and the Silver Falcon at the Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam.

Cast: Hanan Youssef, Boutros Ghali

Writer/Producer/Editor: Tamer El Said

Cinematographer: Ibrahim El Batout

• Special Jury Award, Sakia Festival for Short Feature Films, Cairo 2005

• Best short film, “Image Encounter”, Cairo 2005

• Best short film, 11th National Film Festival for the Egyptian Cinema, Cairo 2005

• Silver Hawk for short fiction, 5th Arab Film Festival, Rotterdam 2005

In 2006 he co-wrote the feature film Ein Shams (Eye of the Sun, 2008) with Ibrahim El Batout, and later started filming a long-term project about the village of Aytaroun which was destroyed in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

In 2007, El Said founded Zero Production, an independent production company in Cairo.

Zero Production supports independent filmmakers in Cairo and the region whether directly producing, lending equipment or offering work space.

El Said is currently in the process of setting up, with Khalid Abdalla and others, Cimatheque, an alternative film centre that aims to offer services and space to help develop and incubate the independent film movement in Cairo through building networks, sharing resources and building an infra-structure for the alternative film platform.

In 2008, El Said began working on his first feature film In the Last Days of the City.

Shot in Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut and Berlin, the film is on the lives of a group of friends from Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon have been shaped by their cities of birth and the instability of their region.

El-Said is member of National Culture Policy Group, an initiative launched in 2009, with the aim to propose a plan of action to better organise cultural endeavours in Egypt.

In the Last Days of the City (Akher Ayyam Al Madina)

"In the fading grandeur of downtown Cairo, Khalid, a 34 year old filmmaker is struggling to make a film about a city in which everything he loves is leaving him. He is about to be kicked out of his house, the woman he loved is emigrating, and the death of his father has awakened memories of life before childhood death of his sister when Cairo and his country seemed a brighter world. Now, all around him, dreams as much as buildings are disintegrating, but the need to keep going has not. Capturing the stories of his friends at home, and abroad, in Beirut and Baghdad and Berlin, Khalid learns how to live and keep creating, in the face of ruin, of war, and disappearing hopes."

Cast: Khaled Abdalla

Writer: Tamer El Said

Producers: Tamer El Said, Khalid Abdalla and Cat Villiers

Film status: in post-production

Art Director: Salah Marei

Production Company: Zero Production Autonomous Limited

Director's Quote: "I am making this film out of love for my city and because I want to show its contradictions – its rising violence and invisible magic, and the story of our silence as we watch our cities being conquered by oppression, ignorance and extremism. In Cairo, like in every other city in the Middle East, there is the feeling that we can’t keep going like this – the end is near, and it might be violent."

The late art director Salah Marei worked closely with Tamer El Said on the location sets for the film, "[h]e took notice of every little aspect, even the door knobs, keys and keychains.” They looked at more than 60 apartments to find the most suited one for the film, deciding upon the color of the walls to match the skin tones of the two main actors.

On a Monday (Yom al-Itneyn)

His first fiction feature In the Last Days of the City was shot in Cairo, Berlin, Baghdad and Beirut and premiered in 2016 at the Berlin International Film Festival.

He is co-founder of several independent initiatives in Cairo, including Cimatheque Alternative Film Centre, Mosireen, and Zero Production.