US Filmmakers Fuentes-León, Martinez Reflect upon Pitching Workshop Experience at Cairo Industry Days

The 45th Cairo International Film Festival, and its Cairo Industry Days witness the continuation of the cooperation between the festival, and the US Embassy. US Film Independent organized several workshops for filmmakers to assist them in pitching their projects. American filmmakers Javier Fuentes-León, and Valerie Castillo Martinez headed the workshops; exchanging their experiences, and wide knowledge with the promising directors. 

About the main objectives of the workshops, Fuentes-León explained: “What we do is to work with upcoming Egyptian filmmakers to give them tools to present their projects because all of them have not made their movie yet. So, they’re looking to make the movie. And, we help them to find ways to present their projects to collaborators, investors, or producers.”

Regarding their experience with Egyptian filmmakers, Martinez added: “We were talking about how interesting projects are. Like they’re very different, they’re very specific to Egypt, but they’re also very universal. So, somebody who is not from Egypt can understand and feel the connection to the emotions but also will learn about stories and legends and how the society works. Some of them are comedy, and some of them are drama. They’re all very passionate about what they want to do, great to see. They have a lot of questions, which is good, they want to find out how things happen.”

She continued: “They’re interested in seeing how it works outside Egypt. In addition to teaching them how to pitch their project effectively, we also talk about making our own feature films because they’re also set in different countries. So we have a similar experience of navigating the world of co-productions and trying to tell a story that comes from an authentic place, your home, you know, where you’re from. I’m a writer-producer, he’s a writer-director, and so I talk a lot about the production aspects of financing or the problems that we are facing today as first-time filmmakers trying to sell a story that’s not English language primarily so there are different things that we get to touch upon.”

After that, they discussed the issue of film distribution around the world, Fuentes-León expressed: “I think what’s really exciting about the viewing experience is becoming more globalized because of streaming and so a lot of people can easily access films that are not necessarily English language from we’re able to experience films from different countries because you know things like Netflix or Amazon are offering a lot of space for endless amounts of content. I think, as a result, the understanding of universal stories or stories that occur in different countries. 

It is more accessible. On the other hand, the streamers tend to dominate or monopolize the market so in terms of profitability. It kind of leaves behind the smaller distributors which is sad but I think there just needs to be an ecosystem for this to work between the large streamers and the smaller distributors because both need to coexist in the industry, in this film space and it’s harder now to have a theatrical release. It’s harder, you know, it’s easier to have it on a platform, or a streaming platform.”

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