Ahmed Mourad, the best-selling author of &ldquo;El Feel El Azraa,&rdquo; &ldquo;1919,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Turab El Mass," has been on a streak of success ever since his debut &ldquo;Vertigo.&rdquo; His novels have gained a massive critical and commercial appeal. Alongside the renowned director Marwan Hamed, the duo has successfully translated his novels to the screen, creating some of the most important and successful movies to come out in the last decade including, the top highest-grossing movie of all time in Egypt &ldquo;El Feel El Azraa 2&rdquo;.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Kira &amp; El Gin&rdquo; is now one of the top 10 highest-grossing movies in Egypt, and Ahmed Mourad took us to the behind-the-scenes of the movie. We will discuss with him his journey as an author, his inspirations, and most importantly, some exclusive news about his next project &ldquo;El Feel El Azraa 3.&rdquo;
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"Kira &amp; El Gin"
When asked about the reason behind choosing &ldquo;Kira W el Jinn&rdquo; as the title of the movie, Mourad stated that &ldquo;the movie wasn&rsquo;t titled &ldquo;1919&rdquo; like the novel it&rsquo;s based on because the movie is not a historical reference, but a story of all the citizens that took part in the revolution. It&rsquo;s simply a battle between Egyptians and an empire&hellip; kind of a superhero movie. This will help the younger generations in finding Egyptian superheroes instead of hating their own history that is presented in an uninteresting way at schools.&rdquo;
What exactly is the recipe you use for a successful adaptation? It is a known fact that readers tend to be very critical of any book-to-movie adaptation; however, in some specific cases, like you and Hamed, your adaptations usually receive praise from fans.
There is no way the audience who read the novel will be satisfied with any movie adaptation of any sort. That is because the reader has an important part in structuring the story; their imagination is a key element in building the novel. So it is understandable that the reader automatically does not feel comfortable with the portrayal of the character they envisioned for a long time. Unlike the viewer who sees the visual representation of the story during the movie firsthand; they have no reservoir to compare it to. Audiences, in general, should not make comparisons between the novel and the movie; they are two separate entities.&nbsp;
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You have said in a previous interview that movies are loosely based on history and whoever wants to know about their history should seek academic books that handle history with its accuracies, how are you able to transfer your readers to 1919 and why specifically did you choose this era?
Mourad explained that the behind-the-scenes of the movie were difficult and exhausting from executing the ideas to adhering to the accuracies of the 1900s. He elaborated that &ldquo;what happened in 1919, a hundred years ago, was vague and cannot be traced because the revolution seemed unorganized and was exploited by the colonizers.&rdquo;
However, Mohamed Saeed Pasha, Eryan Youssef Saad, and Mostafa Amin in &ldquo;The Forbidden Book&rdquo; are some of the voices that were keen to shed light on the era. The intricacies and details of the era socially remained unknown and hard to reach from how people ate, to how they talked, to what cinemas they went to; these details took a lot of time and effort because I did not want to use the stereotypes of how people nowadays picture this period.
I spent some time in Down Town walking between the remains of how Egypt used to be in 1919. The attention to detail was reflected in our process because everyone else working on the movie used the same route in adhering to the details, from the interior design to the hairstyles and makeup specialist, to the director by Marwan Hamed.
&ldquo;There are a few generations that do not even know the feeling of being colonized, so it is important to transfer the feelings and the motifs of the colonized to the viewers.&rdquo;
Is Ahmed Mourad okay with the idea of a director doing some major editing to his novel, such as cutting some of the major scenes or deleting ones altogether?
&ldquo;There will always be a problem in the creation process if the director is not on the same page with the rest of the team. Editing, rewriting, and improving are all normal processes in adapting any novel. The problem lies in a director that is not fully aware of the novel he is working with; this is why I am keen on working with Marwan Hamed. He is very much aware, and he can work successfully with my novels.&rdquo;
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&nbsp;Screenplay Writing
Do you envision certain actors when writing any screenplay?
&ldquo;Yes, of course, I envision my characters in certain ways in the screenplay, but I envision actors after they are cast for sure. After all, the actor&rsquo;s job is to convince me that he is my character, that he can encapsulate the motifs and intricacies the character has. With Hamed&rsquo;s vision and mine combined, we can translate the screenplay to the screen.&rdquo;
&nbsp;How similar or different is the process of writing a screenplay and constructing a novel?
&ldquo;Although cinema and literature are similar in a lot of ways, writing a screenplay has different rules than a novel in many different ways. I can write a 500-page book where I can tell the reader as much as I want, but in cinema, we are bounded by the limited number of hours in which the audience can still be attentive. Movies can go up to three hours, which is exactly how long &ldquo;Kira W el Jinn&rdquo; is.&rdquo;
&nbsp;When writing a novel, the reader&rsquo;s job is to imagine the words on the paper; the author only tells them a sketch of how the character or the setting looks, and he can fill in the gaps with his own view.
&nbsp;However, movies are like a full meal, it gives the audience the imagination of the team behind it, each member leaving their footprint in each section of the movie. Therefore, no one should regard movies as history-based pieces of work because they are combinations of art and imagination.
If I had stuck to pure history, &ldquo;documentary style&rdquo;, I would&rsquo;ve written about Ahmed Kira in three pages because history barely has anything about Kira himself; nothing about this family life or about his social life. In that case, I had to use my imagination to humanize and legend-ise him.
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Why did you choose to adapt "Al Aslyeen" as a direct screenplay instead of a novel like the rest of your work?
"When I started writing &ldquo;Al Aslyeen&rdquo; the idea of surveillance was trending in movies like Snowden. I usually take around two years to write a novel and be fully satisfied with the outcome. I was choosing whether to write &ldquo;Al Aslyeen&rdquo; as a screenplay, and &ldquo;1919&rdquo; as a novel or vice versa. I ended up writing &ldquo;Al Aslyeen&rdquo; as a screenplay and &ldquo;1919&rdquo; as a novel as it needs extensive research.&nbsp;
Inspirations
After inspiring so many of the new generation of writers, who are some of your favorite local and international authors?
Mourad says that he is a big fan of Naguib Mahfouz; &ldquo;he was like a godfather to me, I started reading for him when I was twelve years old.&rdquo; Mohamed Mahzangy, Mohamed El Mansy Kandeel, and Youssef Zidan, all contributed to literature with their novels. Haruki Murakami is definitely an important influence. Jos&eacute; Saramago, Gabriel Garc&iacute;a M&aacute;rquez, Viginia Woolf, Zoran Gvojic, and Edgar Allen Poe are all authors I admire. &nbsp;Stephen King and JK Rowling are astounding contemporary authors for the newer generations.

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