Hala Khalil
Hala Khalil is a writer/director born in Egypt in 1967. She was an engineering student at one point, but switched paths and instead became a student at the Film Academy in Cairo, where she got a degree in film directing in 1992. Since then, she has made many short films and documentaries, along with two feature films in the past three years. Most, if not all, of her work has earned her recognition and awards at film festivals and she is proving to be one of the more acclaimed new directors from Egypt.
Her earlier work is mostly shorts and documentaries, including "The Kite" (1997) which received awards at both the Milano and Egyption Film Festivals. More recently, though, she has begun making fictional feature films, the first of which was "The Best Times" in 2004. This film shows the growth of a young woman who, after her mother's death, returns to her childhood home to become better acquainted with her past and herself, helped along by music and anonymous letters. The numerous awards (from the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival, the Rabat Film Festival, and the Egyption Film Festival) and good reviews for "The Best Times" have created much hype for her current film, "Cut and Paste" (2006). "Cut and Paste" follows two strangers with dead-end jobs in Cairo who meet with hopes to emigrate from Egypt to New Zealand. They decide to get married in order to be able to obtain visas more easily, and plan to part ways once they have arrived in Oceania. However, the involvement of family and friends in the complicates everything...
This trailer (and a similar one, but in the form of a music video) seem to be the only media of Hala Khalil's work I can find online. Even without subtitles, the film seems a little silly, a little (over)dramatic, and brimming with fun and sometimes intense (though maybe cheesy) music; it seems to be, essentially, a true romantic comedy. Hopefully it finds its way to Minneapolis.
I found Hala Khalil by searching through Landmark Theatres' websites in different cities, which eventually linked me to an Arab Film Festival taking place in San Francisco. Her films are, from what I could find, almost exclusively shown at film festivals and they seem to do well there. However, her awards seem to mainly come form Arab film festivals, so I am not sure if her films are screened only at these specific events, or if these just happen to be the ones where her and her films get more recognition.
Though it was fairly easy to find Hala Khalil, it was extremely difficult to find any information on her or her projects. I was even searching in Arab and translating pages on a random basis to see if one would have some real, solid information on her and her films. Unfortunately, it didn't help much. I did get some basic facts, though, and there were quite a few reviews of her two feature films. Now that I know her name, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for her.