‘The Stories’ Director Abu Bakr Shawky Says His Film, Inspired by How His Egyptian Dad and Austrian Mother Started off as Pen Pals, Is About “Worlds Meeting”

Egyptian-Austrian filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky (Yommedine, Hajjan) is back. After debuting movies at Cannes and Toronto, he world premiered his latest, The Stories, at the29th editionof the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival(PÖFF) in Estonia on Sunday.

Given the reputation he has developed with his past works, including 2018’s Yommedine being Egypt’s international Oscar submission, the writer-director’s new movie drew a big crowd, which used every second of a Q&A following the premiere screening to hear more about how The Stories came to be.

Shawky and his creative team cinematically imagine the story of his parents – his father grew up in Egypt, his mother in Austria – and stories of their families, friends and acquaintances, starting with how the mother and first came into contact as international pen pals.

The Stories tells five stories, leaving time gaps in between, that mix archival footage of political speeches, soccer matches, film clips and radio transmissions with acted scenes. The film also provides a musical kaleidoscopes of Egyptian songs from 1967 to 1984, along with classical music.

”Egypt. Summer 1967. Ahmed receives a letter from Austria – Liz has replied to his search for a pen pal,” reads a synopsis for The Stories. “They begin a long-distance friendship that is viewed with suspicion by his relatives. From this summer onwards, Ahmed’s efforts to become a pianist despite his humble social background will gain unstoppable momentum, as Liz pushes him towards his elusive goal: a public concert. Together, with this shared dream always in mind, Ahmed and Liz will live through war, family joys, opposition and dramas, failures and triumphs that rocked Egypt until the 1980s.”

Written and directed by Shawky, the cast is led by
Amir El-Masry (The Crown, Industry, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) and Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,Egon Schiele:Death and the Maiden,A Hidden Life). Nelly Karim, Ahmed Kamal, and Khaled Mokhtar also feature.

Produced by Julie Viez, The Stories was edited by Roland Stöttinger, with Wolfgang Thaler handling the cinematography. Goodfellas is handling sales.

“This film is based on the true story of how my parents got together in the ‘70s, and my parents are here today,” Shawky said to much applause, welcoming his parents on stage. “It’s about worlds colliding. It’s about worlds meeting. It’s about little victories in life, and little people trying to do big things.”

During a Q&A, the filmmaker shared that his family is full of “great storytellers, and … whenever they tell the same story, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, and it becomes more fantastical and much more removed from what actually happened. And I thought, it’d be a good thing to make a movie about that, because most of what’s happening is fiction, but it’s based on reality, which is how my parents got together when when they were writing letters to each other in the ‘70s. And all these stories that I would hear over and over and over again, in my mind, they become much more fantastical.”

Concluded Shawky: “Actually, maybe, in reality, they were much more normal, but this is how I imagined them.”

Pachner shared that “I just learned a few lines” in Arabic for the movie. “Unfortunately, I forgot them all.”

El-Masry recalled: “I had about two months to learn to play Bach and Rachmaninov and an amazing teacher. … There was a lot that I had to learn about positioning and stuff, but the magic of cinema” did the rest.

Shawky’s parents have a cameo in The Stories. But their son didn’t tell them the full extent that their families’ life would be brought to the screen, his mother shared during the Tallinn Q&A to much laughter from the audience. “He said it’s [snippets] about us, but it’s a lot about us,” she said.

And she ended on a celebratory note: “Each and every character that is in the film, all of these persons, I spent many, many years with in Egypt before we even got married. All these characters, really lived. Most of them have passed away now. And [my son] made a monument to all these very simple people who were always on the losing side of life, but now, actually, there’s a film about them. Thank you for this.”