"The Nile Hilton Incident" and "Strong Island" are two new international collaborations – and recent Sundance winners – that are co-produced with Denmark's Final Cut for Real, the company renowned for Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence."
Read about co-producing with Denmark
"The Nile Hilton Incident," winner of Sundance's award in the international feature competition, is a Swedish-German-Danish thriller directed by Egyptian-born Tarik Saleh and set in Cairo in the weeks leading up to the 2011 revolution. On the Danish team is editor Theis Schmidt, costume designer Louize Nissen and visual effects supervisor Peter Hjorth. Monica Hellström and Signe Byrge Sørensen are the co-producers for Final Cut for Real.
Byrge Sørensen is also serving as co-producer on Yance Ford's "Strong Island," which was awarded Sundance's Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling. The film examines the violent death of the director's brother in 1992 and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free. Janus Billeskov Jansen played a critical role in shaping the narrative as editor on the film. Read more about the editing process in our feature story Co-produce with People You Like.
"Strong Island" is selected for the Berlin Film Festival's Panorama Dokumente programme, see more at berlinale.de.
Fares Fares plays the lead as an easily corrupted police detective in Sundance winner "The Nile Hilton Incident." Photo: Atmo Rights
Praise in the press
The two films received warm reviews after their Sundance premieres. The following is a roundup of quotes from the international press:
The Nile Hilton Incident
"Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh's film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets." Read Variety review
"'The Nile Hilton Incident' represents the type of penetrating filmmaking that only a writer-director intimately familiar with Egyptian culture but possessing an outsider's perspective could convincingly accomplish." Read the Hollywood Reporter review"Set in Cairo but shot in Morocco and Germany, 'The Nile Hilton Incident' draws more on vintage European and Stateside models in its take on systemic police corruption and its moody noirish feel: 'The French Connection,' 'Heat' and Jean-Pierre Melville are all there in the mix." Read Screen review
Strong Island
★★★★★ "The anatomy of the murder of a black man in America is sadly a film format we've become accustomed to. There's something different about 'Strong Island,' however, a film characterised by raw emotion and calm anger, which must surely be considered one of the finest documentaries of 2017 already." Read Guardian review
"There is no shortage of documentaries on the preponderance of racially motivated shootings that have become a fixture of modern American society, but none carry the striking intimacy of Yance Ford's 'Strong Island.'" Read IndieWire review
"'Strong Island' takes the worst that life might do to us and transforms it into about as poetic and unsparing a statement as can be made with the documentary form." Read the Wrap review
Cairo Confidential
Egypten 2011, få uger inden det egyptiske forår. Noredin, en politibetjent i Cairos korrupte system, bliver sat til at efterforske mordet på en sangerinde på Nile Hilton Hotel. Han indser snart, at mordet trækker tråde helt op til den egyptiske magtelite og beslutter sig for at alliere sig med dem, som er forsvarsløse imod systemet.
