Daoud Abdel Sayed
Daoud Abdel Sayed (Arabic: داود عبد السيد pronounced [dæˈwuːd ʕæbdesˈsæjjed]) is an Egyptian director and screenwriter. He was born in Cairo in 1946. He started as the assistant of Youssef Chahine in The Land. He made several critically acclaimed films, and won several international awards notably for The Land of Fear which was produced in 1999.
Abd El-Sayed received a number national and international awards: best director for ‘al-Kit-Kat’ at the Biennale des Cinémas Arabes in Paris and the Damascus Film Festival in 1992, the Silver Pyramid at the International Cairo Film Festival for his film ‘Searching for Sayyid Marzuq’ (1991) and the Silver Pyramid and the best script award at the same festival for his film ‘Land of Fear’ (1999).
Following his international achievements and recognitions he became a member of the Higher Film Festival Commission and the Higher Council of Culture in Egypt. He assisted in several film festivals as a jury notably in the 8th Biennale of Arab Cinemas in Paris (Institut du Monde Arabe).
His 2010 film Messages from the Sea was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, but it didn't make the final shortlist.
Born in 1946, Abd El-Sayed graduated in 1967 from the Higher Film Institute in Cairo as a film director. Daoud Abdel Sayed started his career working as an assistant director in several movies such as “Al Ard” by Youssef Chahince, “Al Ragol Al Lazy Faqad Zaloh” by Kamal El Sheikh and “Awham El Hob”. However, he found that the job of assistant director was not for him as he had higher ambitions such as directing and producing his own movies: “This job is not for me because it needs a lot of focus, something that I simply do not have”.
That is why he chose to film several documentaries in order to depict the daily agonies of the Egyptian society such as “On the people and prophets” produced in 1980 and “Working in the field” produced in 1979. Those documentaries gave Daoud Abdel Sayed the opportunity to mingle with the Egyptian mainstream society and deepen his knowledge about the different social classes that compose the Egyptian society. All those factors deeply affected his film making later on in his life.
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