The Israeli Embassy in Adel Imam’s building

Prominent Egyptian comedian-actor Adel Imam held a press conference to talk about his 119 film “Safara fil Binaya” (An Embassy in the Building), which he will complete shooting the final scenes in June to have it ready for screening in July. Adel wanted to clarify a few details regarding the nature of the film that tackles a very sensitive political issue, which is normalization with Israel.

The film revolves around an Egyptian petrol engineer, who has lived in Dubai for a quarter of a century and finally goes home to Egypt to discover that the Israeli Embassy is located right next door to his apartment. The film will for the first time present a character that plays the role of the Israeli ambassador.

Adel stressed that the film aims at answering one basic question, which is why Egyptians refuse normalization until now?. the film is also a message to Israel and any other country Egypt has signed peace agreements with, to make them understand the point of view of the ordinary citizen to show them that art plays the most important and influential role to reflect the feelings of people.

Adel stressed on the point that the film is a comedy and not a political one. Adel plays an amusing character that tries desperately to stay away from politics but to his disappointment finds himself engrossed in a major political affair.

The cast of the film, which is directed by Sharif Arafeh, resumed filming scenes at Al Ahram studios in Cairo after their return from Dubai, where most of the scenes were shot..

Recently, Adel expressed his extreme anger towards the Egyptian magazine Al Ahram for publishing an article about him entitled “Al Za’eem attacks July Revolution in an Israeli magazine”. Adel stressed that what the Al Ahram published, which is a direct attack against him, is incorrect and misleading and stressed that he is very disappointed that such a well-known magazine would publish nonsense before verifying it.

The actor also stressed that he never underwent any sort of interviews with an Israeli media source. The chief editor of Al Ahram repeatedly apologized to Adel for the misunderstanding and stressed that he should have called the actor before publishing such an article to make sure the information is correct.