Egyptian Director Develops Satirical Dark Comedy About a Reality-TV Moon Trip
Egyptian filmmaker Ayman El Amir is developing a new feature, a satirical dark comedy called A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon. Variety reported the project on 9 November 2026.
The story follows George, a Coptic Christian aspiring actor who is stuck working as an extra. His fortunes change when he joins a space-themed reality TV show that promises a voyage to the moon, and he becomes a national hero.
El Amir writes and directs the film. Nada Riyadh produces it for Felucca Films, a company based in Cairo.
The project has been selected for the Crossroads Co-Production Forum, run by the Agora, the industry arm of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece. Co-production forums are meeting points where filmmakers pitch unfinished projects to potential partners who might help finance films made across borders. The festival said in October that this year's forum includes 14 projects from 15 countries.
The project has been moving through funding channels for some time. In October 2024, Variety reported that the film was one of the CineGouna funding titles, a set of projects backed at the Egyptian film festival's development programme. Earlier that year, Variety had reported that El Amir and Riyadh were developing two feature fiction projects.
Their earlier work has also reached the international stage. El Amir co-directed The Brink of Dreams with Riyadh. According to Variety's latest report, the documentary won the Golden Eye Award for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, making it the first Egyptian film to take that prize.
Cannes' Golden Eye is given to a film from the festival's Official Selection, the main programme that the festival's organisers curate each year. The award gives documentary makers a clear route into the festival's wider market, where sales agents and buyers look for new titles.
For now, A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon remains at the development stage. Its path from the forum to cinemas will depend on the financing, casting and partners that the team secures in the coming months.
