Closed Doors

Atef Hetata is an extremely promising young Egyptian director. He was born on December 10, 1965 in New York. At the age of eighteen he won the Cairo University Literary prize for a collection of short stories. Four years later (1988) he graduated from the Faculty of Engineering (Department of Communications) with honors. During the years 1989 to 1993, he worked as an assistant director for a number of filmmakers, including the great Youssef Chahine (whose films The Land and Destiny have shown in earlier Festivals). He also worked on Spike Lee’s Malcom X. He has written and directed three short films: Salut Barbès (Paris 1989), Violin (Cairo 1990), and The Bride of the Nile (Cairo 1993). The last two films earned him a number of international awards, including Best Fiction Film at the Bilboa Film Festival and the Grand Prix du Jury at the Montpellier Film Festival and. His prize money from Montpellier enabled him to begin work on The Closed Doors, and Youssef Chahine also provided financial support (not surprising, given Chahine’s strong anti-fundamentalist perspective). The Closed Doors has gone on to win a number of awards at film festivals, including Venice, Cannes, Alexandria, Carthage, and the Biannale of Arab Film in Paris. —Library Cornell