‘Land of Fear’ Director Blames Producer for Depriving his Film of Oscar Contest

Egyptian director Daoud Abdel Sayyed confirmed that “the backward and the chaotic way of administration of the Production Company “Shua’a” was behind depriving his film Ard al Khawf (Land of Fear) of competing in the American Oscar prizes contest. 

“The company neglected the nomination of my film by the Oscar committee and did not meet the basic condition for the contest by screening the film commercially in the US. It did not also distribute the film’s video cassettes or CD’s among the committee members,” the director told AFP on Monday. 

He considered the “backward production mentality of the company executives as the reason behind wasting a valuable opportunity for the Arab cinema to take part in the competition and the possibility for opening the American market for the Arab cinema productions.” 

For his part, the cinema critic Ashraf Bayyoumi attributed the failure to participate in the contest to the “governmental agencies and private corporations despite the demands by all those concerned with the film to provide full support for it in order not to deprive the Egyptian and Arab cinema of this opportunity.” 

Earlier, the Oscar Awards Administration announced the nomination of the following films after excluding dozens of foreign non-English films. These included the French film Masir Emily Polan (Emily Polan Destiny), Indian film Monsen Wedding, Brazilian film Sun Creation, Mexican film Your Mother Too and the Bosnian film I Do not Satisfy Anybody. 

However, the films nominated for the Oscar won many prizes at various festivals. 

The film Ard al Khawf (Land of Fear) costarring Ahmed Zaki and the Jordanian actress Farah won many important international prizes including Damascus festival golden award two years ago and the Silver Pyramid award at Cairo festival. 

Oscar prizes will be handed out to the winners at the concluding ceremony, which will be held on March 24, 2004 -- Albawaba.com