Egypt picks The Stories for 99th Oscars race
Egypt has chosen Abu Bakr Shawky's drama The Stories as its entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards, Deadline reported on 21 September.
The category is the Oscar race where each country puts forward one film. Egypt's pick this time is a romance that crosses borders.
Amir El-Masry stars as an aspiring Egyptian concert pianist. Valerie Pachner co-stars as an Austrian girl who makes contact with him in 1967 through a pen-pal scheme organised for young people, according to Deadline. It starts with letters. It grows across years.
The story is set in Egypt from the late 1960s through to the 1980s. It was inspired by the true story of how Shawky's own parents met.
The Stories is Shawky's third feature, after Yomeddine and Hajjan. His first film, Yomeddine, played in competition at Cannes in 2018.
The new film began its public life at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2025. It then won the Golden Tanit for Best Film at the Carthage Film Festival and screened at the Red Sea International Film Festival, Deadline reported.
The wider cast includes Nelly Karim, Ahmed Kamal, Karim Kassem, Sabry Fawaz, Sherif El Dessouky, Khaled Mokhtar, Ahmed El Azaar and Amr Abed. The production brings together companies from Egypt, France, Austria and Sweden, as listed for its Red Sea Film Festival presentation in 2025.
What makes this stand out is the family link. Shawky has built a period romance from his parents' meeting, with a pianist at its centre and two decades of change around him.
