Director Tarik Saleh on Depicting Tension Between State Security and Religious Power in Egypt in ‘Boy From Heaven’

What the monarch wants! Alicia Keys responded to backlash about her set list for Party at the Palace — and revealed that Queen Elizabeth II chose all the songs herself.

Even the Queen of England loves that concrete jungle where dreams are made of.

Alicia Keys is seemingly addressing the backlash surrounding her performance at Queen Elizabeth‘s Platinum Jubilee concert.

Machine Gun Kelly introduced his nine million Instagram followers to his estranged mother on Thursday. The singer shared a photo of him and his mom, who abandoned him as a child.

Saudi Arabia is getting its own version of “The Office.”“Al Maktab,” the name of the Saudi Arabian version, will span 20 episodes. MBC Studios is producing the show, after making a deal with BBC Studios, which licenses the franchise.The new version, which begins production in June, is set at a courier company.It will star Saleh Abuamrh, who will play the boss – Malik Al-Tuwaifi.

The Office is set to air later this year.BBC Studios recently struck a deal with local producer and broadcaster MBC, who will air the new show via streamer Shahid VIP.The new remake will be called Al Maktab and will be directed by Egyptian filmmaker Hisham Fathi, according to Deadline.The self-absorbed boss played by Ricky Gervais in the UK version and Steve Carell in the US remake will be played by Saleh Abuamrh in Al Maktab, and is called Malik Al-Tuwaif.So far, The Office has been remade in 10 territories including France, Germany, Canada and India. Al Maktab will be the first in the Arabic language.André Renaud, BBC Studios’ SVP Format Sales, said in a statement: “Although office working may look slightly different for many of us in 2022, the familiarity of these well-observed characters as they navigate petty rivalries, moments of friendship and humour, and a boss that sometimes makes a fool of themselves still rings just as true.”Meanwhile, several cast members of The Office revealed they were “almost killed twice” while filming episode ‘Work Bus’. Actors Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who play Pam Beesley and Angela Martin in the US sitcom, recalled the incident in their new book The Office BFFs: Tales Of The Office From Two Best Friends Who Were There.The episode, directed by Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston, saw Dwight (Rainn Wilson) convert a bus into an office space after Jim (John Krasinski) convinces him the office building is unsafe.In an excerpt from the book on Mashable, Kinsey wrote: “We want you to know that we see the irony that Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White Sr.

A couple on their honeymoon have had to fork out £1,000 for accommodation after their easyJet flight back to the UK from Egypt was suddenly cancelled.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentProlific Italian film and stage director Mario Martone, who is a Venice aficionado, is back in competition in Cannes 27 years after his Elena Ferrante adaptation “L’amore molesto” (“Troubling Love”) launched in competition from the Croisette in 1995. And there is a close connection between these two films that delve deep into the entrails of Martone’s native Naples.In his well-received “Nostalgia”, praised by Variety as Martone’s “most rewarding film in years,” ace actor Pierfrancesco Favino plays the middle-aged Felice Lasco, who returns to the bustling port city after having lived in Egypt for 40 years. Once back, he is caught up in memories of a distant life spent in his hometown, as his criminal youth slowly catches up with him.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s absurdist social satire “Feathers,” in which the good-for-nothing husband of a woman with three children is turned into a chicken, is the big winner of the sixth edition of the Critics’ Awards for Arab Films.The biting black comedy, winner of last year’s Cannes Critics’ Week prize, scooped best film, director and screenplay at the prizes organized by Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (ACC) and voted on by 167 film critics from 68 countries, who viewed the films on Festival Scope.Nominees are chosen among Arab-language films that premiered on the festival circuit outside of the Arab world in 2021. The awards were announced on Sunday in Cannes.

In 2017, Swedish-Egyptian director Tarek Saleh’s breakthrough film “The Nile Hilton Incident” was the subject of much controversy and was ultimately banned in Egypt due to its in-depth portrayal of police corruption in modern-day Egypt. Five years later, Saleh is back with “Boy From Heaven” (“Walad Min Al Janna“), a transfixing feature tackling the harsh realities that occur in the country, this time exploring the complicated and corrupt relationship between religion and politics.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticElections, as everyone knows, are too important to be left up to chance, and so the world is constantly inventing ways to ensure their outcome in advance. In Egypt, when it comes to the choice of a new Grand Imam — a lifetime appointment, whose fatwas impact national law — the process doesn’t even pretend to be democratic: The successful candidate is selected from a small Supreme Council of Scholars, with considerations the outside world will never know.

It’s early days at the Cannes Film Festival, so awards prognostication might seem a little premature, but still, it’s hard to imagine that the phenomenal performance given by Swedish-Lebanese actor Fares Fares in Tarik Saleh’s searing political thriller Boy from Heaven will go entirely unnoticed by this year’s jury. Topping the work he did in Saleh’s 2017 Sundance hit The Nile Hilton Incident, Fares commands the screen from the moment he arrives, playing a character whose disheveled appearance conceals a ruthless efficiency, a laser-focused mind and an entirely pragmatic concept of morality.