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EXCLUSIVE: Dubai-based global management and production company 75East has signed Sudanese writer-director and producer Amjad Abu Alala.
The director first broke out internationally with debut film You Will Die At 20, which won Venice’s Luigi de Laurentiis Award for Best First Feature in 2019.
He was among a wave of filmmakers to emerge out of Sudan in the wake of its 2019 revolution, ending the 30-year rule of dictator Omar al-Bashir, although hopes for a democratic, civil society have since been shattered by the civil war involving two rival military factions.
You Will Die At 20 was shot in Sudan in December 2018 in the early days of the popular uprising against, with the struggles of the film’s protagonist described as a metaphor for the Sudanese people’s fight for democracy.
Following its Venice prize, the feature played at a raft of top international festivals, including TIFF and Rotterdam, winning more than 25 awards, and was then put forward as Sudan’s first ever Oscar-submission for Best International Feature Film following a U.S. theatrical release.
Since then, Abu Alala has continued to champion Sudanese and Arab cinema on the world stage through his production company Station Films.
Under that banner, he co-produced Ali El Arabi’s Sundance-hit Captains of Zaatari in 2021, and also produced Amr Gamal’s Yemeni Oscar-submission The Burdened, winner of two awards at Berlinale and Chicago IFF’s Golden Hugo Award.
The company’s biggest success to date has been the Mohamed Kordofani-helmed and Lupita Nyong‘o-EP’d work Goodbye Julia, which won the Freedom Prize following its 2023 Cannes Un Certain Regard, and went on to break box office records in Egypt and the Gulf.
His latest producer credit was on Abdelwahab Shawky’s The Last Miracle, which was selected as the opening film of the 2024 El Gouna Film Festival but was the pulled at the last minute.
Abu Alala is a regular member of festival juries including Locarno, the Sight & Sound Poll, and El Gouna Film Festival. Earlier this year, he served as a Generation jury member at the Berlinale.
He joins a growing roster of filmmakers signed by 75East which launched in 2023 with a focus on filmmaking talent from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region and diaspora. Other filmmakers on its books include BAFTA-winner and Oscar-nominee Bassel Ghandour, Palme d’Or-nominee Abu Bakr Shawky and 2024 Gotham Awards-nominee Mahdi Fleifel, Lebanese director Nay Tabbara and Egyptian director Karim Shaaban.
