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This Egyptian Short Film Just Screened at a Prestigious Film Festival

A record 3,000 films were entered in this year’s BAFTA Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2018, making the eighth edition of the event the biggest yet. And out of the pool of thousands of films submitted for consideration, only 300 made the cut — one of which is an Egyptian short film by Anne Mehany.

The London College of Fashion student’s short film, entitled “Nonsense”, was selected by the University of the Arts London to be exclusively on screens during the five-day-long cinematic event, making it the first-ever film by an Egyptian to be screened at York’s prestigious cinematic festival. “The title refers to my personal life after my father’s passing two years ago, when all I was feeling was the nonsense of living, and I had a lot of questions back then that I needed to express and question,” explains Mehany to Vogue.me.

The short is a two-minute culmination of snippets of two actors modeling clothing from the Egyptian designer behind Tiyi, Anne Marie Kirollos, and two days worth of edits. “Editing the video was really hard for me due to my editing skills back then,” muses Mehany. The film, which encourages viewers to look beyond fashion’s veneer, was a collaborative effort between herself and her cousin, Andrew Mehany, a former pharmacist who left his career to pursue directing. Inspired by Stella Bruzzi’s 1997 book Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity, “Nonsense” was the first film produced by the cousins’ joint visual and production house, Maison Mehany.

The 23-year-old, who is set to graduate this year, also drew inspiration from The Stanley Kubrick Archive, an accumulation of material owned by the renowned late film director, held by the University of the Arts London in their Archives and Special Collection Centre at the London College of Communication. The budding director also cites the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens as an inspiration. “I admired little Edie’s character and how she was dressing up every day even though she didn’t have enough clothes. She always found a way to connect with the garments and fabrics she had,” she explains.

The mini-movie was shot between London and Los Angeles over a course of 10 weeks. First in LA, as she considers it her “second home away from home”, and the second part in London, where she is based. The fashion student admits that if she had the choice to choose any other location to shoot, she would still settle on the British capital because of “how cosmopolitan” the city is. “London is hybrid, it’s full of counter cultures and subcultures and different backgrounds and ethnicities. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is the ideal place to create striking visuals,” she notes, referencing the roads, freeways, hills, and scenery as the perfect backdrops.

So far, the reaction to the film has been overwhelmingly positive and Mehany hopes viewers can leave with one takeaway: “Our message is that fashion is more than just clothes or fabrics. It is about building and creating a character. Clothes are notes as a language with its own grammar.”

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Credits
Creative direction and Art Direction: Maison Mehany
Director: Yassine Ismail
Production: Maison Mehany
Editing: Maison Mehany
Womenswear designer: Anne Marie Kirollos
Styling: Masion Mehany
Cast: Yasmine Zein and Irati Fonseca
Music: Hisham Zahran and Adham Zahran
Location: London and Los Angeles

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