Tamer El Said

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.

El Said co-founded Cimatheque, a multi purpose space dedicated to celebrating film and supporting the needs of independent filmmakers in Egypt. Built in the context of Egypt’s emergent alternative cinema scene and a country in transition, it is conceived as a dynamic work space for independent filmmakers to collaborate, research and network, while addressing essential needs: education, screening and resources. Equipped with a screening room, viewing stations and a specialised library of films and books, Cimatheque aims to enable access to films rarely, if ever, shown in Egypt, featuring a rich variety of international films within a wider screening programme that gives essential exposure to Arab and Egyptian independent films. Alongside this, Cimatheque provides a year round educational programme of workshops and courses focusing on key issues like producing, screen-writing, editing and camera work, bringing together local and international filmmakers and industry professionals to exchange skills and experiences. Hosting an analogue film laboratory and accordant training programme, filmmakers are allowed to work with alternative methodologies and film material at affordable rates. Open to the public and filmmakers of all levels of experience, Cimatheque is planned to be a hub for filmmakers and film lovers alike, working to build a strong platform for alternative cinema in Egypt.

In the Last Days of the City, Fiction, 118 min, 2016 On a Monday, Fiction, 10 min, 2005 Take Me, Documentary, 52 min, 2004 Music of the nets, Documentary, 26 min, 2000 Crisscross, Fiction, 20 min, 1998 Like a feather, Fiction, 12 min, 1996 Charlie, Fiction, 8 min, 1995 18 September, 12 min, 1994

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."

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 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.

On a Monday (Yom al-Itneyn) 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.

Take Me (Ghaeir Khodoni) Egypt/UAE, 2004, 53 min. Borrowing its title from a famous song of Moroccan leftist activists, Take Me is a powerful story of an undefeatable will to survive: for one's country, for one's family, and to tell the story of one's life. The film revisits the harrowing memories of a group of Moroccan men who as young activists were ”kidnapped,” tortured, and held in isolation without explanation or a trial. Through the grim subject matter the bonds of friendship they formed through shared experience and their hope for a more just Morocco rise to the surface. The film, produced by Al-Jazeera, won the 2004 Ismailia Film Festival Prize.

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). 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 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.

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

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

Together with Khalid Abdalla, Aida El Kashef, Lobna Darwish, Amr Gharbeia, and Omar Robert Hamilton, Tamer El Said founded Mosireen (means insisting/determined) which have created Tahrir Cinema, erected in the Tahrir square during the January 25th Egyptian revolution. With more members to join at later stages, including Salma El Tarzi, Salma Shamel, Mai Saad, Salma Said, Philip Rizk, Mostafa Bahgat, Jasmina Metwaly, and Sherief Gaber; Mosireen became a 10 member Anarchist revolutionary media collective, located in Downtown Cairo with the aim of supporting all kinds of media. Tahrir Cinema featured a daily set of screenings, mainly of raw footage of the revolution, using a projector it brought material to mass audiences, in the place that is the heart of the revolution.