Egyptian film “Feathers” by Omar El Zohairy continued its award-winning streak at the Rabat International Author Film Festival (FICAR), as it won the Audience Award as well as Best Female Performance Award for Demyana Nassar jointly with the leading actress of the Iranian film ‘Titi.’
In January, Feathers was screened at the fourth edition of the Al-Ain Film Festival in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
It was also screened at the first edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, back in December. Previously, the film competed at the Feature Film Competition of the Carthage Film Festival, where it won four awards — the Golden Tanit (The festival’s grand prize), the Golden Tanit for the Best First Feature Film for Omar Al-Zohairy, who won the Best Screenplay Award jointly with his co-screenwriter Ahmed Amer, and Best Female Performance for Demyana Nassar — who played the leading role in the film.
Prior to that, Feathers received the El-Gouna Star for Best Arab Narrative Film at the El-Gouna Film Festival. Moreover, during the same event, El Zohairy got Variety’s MENA Talent of the Year Award 2021.
Feathers featured a fantasy world following the life of a submissive wife fully dedicated to her husband and children while being stuck in the daily, repetitive, mundane grind. A sudden interesting change of events occurs when a magic trick goes wrong at her 4-year-old son’s birthday party, turning her husband into a chicken.
Landing its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Grand Prize of the International Critics’ Week and the FIPRESCI award for the best first feature in Cannes’s parallel sections. It then received a number of other prestigious awards, including Special Mention at the New Horizons International Film Festival in Poland and Best Film at the Roberto Rossellini Awards of the Pingyao International Film Festival in China.
The film was produced by the French producers Juliette Lepoutre and Pierre Menahem (Still Moving), co-produced by Mohamed Hefzy (Film Clinic) and Shahinaz Al-Akkad (Lagoonie Film Production) as well as Derk-Jan Warrink, Koji Nelissen (Kepler Film), Giorgos Karnavas, Konstantinos Kontovrakis (Heretic), and Verona Meier.
