Mohammad Hamad, the director of "Safe Exit", about staying true to his vision: "As a filmmaker, I must be free"

The film "Safe Exit" by Mohammad Hammad received the Atlas Award at the Atlas 2025 Workshops of the Morocco Film Festival before being screened in the Panorama section of Berlinale 2026. The film is now set to make its national debut at the El Gona Film Festival, where it will compete in the Feature Feature category. […]

The film "Safe Exit" by Mohammad Hammad received the Atlas Award at the Atlas 2025 Workshops of the Morocco Film Festival before being screened in the Panorama section of Berlinale 2026. The film is now set for its national premiere at the El Gona Film Festival, where it is competing in the Feature Story category.

The film is Hamad's long-awaited follow-up to his debut film, Withered Green, which bowed at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival and won the Dubai Film Festival's Best Director Award, as well as multiple awards in Cairo. RELATED STORIES Joe Rogan signs nine-figure Spotify contract extension Apple's latest AirPods Max headphones are getting a rare $120 discount for Prime Day

Hammad talks to Variety about the challenges of producing his second film and the satisfaction of appearing in El Gona. Popular in Variety

How have you currently negotiated the difficulties of making an independent film in Egypt? "Safe Exit" is completely self-funded. We have formed a new production company called Pridolya Productions and now we are trying to distribute the film through that company which is a challenge. We chose this model because many Egyptian studios tend to avoid this type of film, especially considering the topics it covers. It was very difficult to even get the necessary permits to shoot the film. But together with my producer Khloud Saad, I knew that I had to make this film, just like "Withered Green".

What about your co-producers? Original Dora Bouchocha with Nomadis Images from Tunisia is one of the producers. And Ibrahim al-Batout, one of the godfathers of independent cinema in Egypt, is also one of the producers. Ibrahim has been with me since the beginning, also as a consultant and I trust him completely. We did the pre-production together, along with Khloud. Ebrahim is one of Egypt's leading independent filmmakers, along with Khairy Beshara and Yesri Nasrallah, and he was with us every day during the filming.

"Withered Green" was released in 2014. Can you talk about the challenges you faced in pulling off Safe Exit? After "Withered Green", I started working on a film called Bullet and Bread. It was a big project, a road movie, with Clinic Films as one of the producers. But after I finished the script [which won the 2020 Red Sea Lodge Award for an Arabic Project] and was scouting locations, the film was rejected by the censors. So my lovely project stopped after four years of work. After that, I couldn't write, but I called the great director Daoud Abdul-Sayed and he told me to start another project, write another film. At first I told him it's very hard, I'm not good now. But after a month or so, I started writing Safe Exit, which took about another year to finish the script.

But you don't play it safe with a "safe exit" - there are things in the film that might upset the censors here, too. Look, as a filmmaker, I have to be free to express my point of view and choose the topics I want to address. We had long discussions with the censorship department and maybe this discussion had a positive effect on the film. Now they have allowed us to show the film in Egyptian festivals and El Gona is our first national screening. I am very grateful for the support we received from the El Gona Film Festival: this is Egypt, this is my country, and it is very important for me, as well as my cast and crew, that we are here. They believe in the film and for us this is a great opportunity.

Let's talk about your characters. You have three very distinct main characters: a young Coptic man, Saman, who is dealing with trauma; A homeless Muslim woman, Fatima, has seen more than her share of the dark side of life. and Abdullah, the Islamic terrorist. Let's start with the Coptic element. I love my characters, especially Samaan and Fatima. They are pure, very pure. As for Coptic Christians, there are about 15 million in Egypt. Many of them are very successful and have integrated into society, but of course, they have certain issues due to their minority status. But Samaan has another problem: his father was slaughtered by ISIS in Libya, and he suffers from chronic PTSD as a result. He tries to cope with the world he lives in but most importantly he tries to face himself and his fear. She cannot deal with her emotions, which is the opposite of Fatima, who is very talkative and spontaneous. He is illiterate and undocumented, and while they are very different, they are both on the fringes of society.

Can you describe how you worked with the cast? Marwan Waleed, who plays the role of Saman, is a relative newcomer who has only appeared in one series. Noha Fawad, who plays Fatemeh, has been a close friend for many years [she starred in Hamad's 2010 short film Qarmez Pale Rang]. We practiced with those two for nine months.

How did you approach that training time? Number one was getting them used to living together and talking to each other. Ask them to walk the streets of downtown Cairo, sit down for a coffee and make friends. Only then did I talk to them about their stories and characters.

But the most important thing for me in the rehearsals is that it was done in the main locations where we were filming. The last two months of rehearsals were in real locations, so the actors felt at home there.

The appearance of the film is completely different from "Withered Green", which was also filmed by Mohammad Al-Sharqawi. I worked with Mohammad and started with our short films. We always work together. I like a rough look, a rough look. By using available light sources, it is very close to natural appearance. With "Safe Exit" there are more colorful scenes as Fatemeh's character calls the colors. They act in contrast to Samaan's routine, his pale room and work space. I'm drawn to this gritty texture, and "Safe Exit" is a very tough picture, but we also have a little softness in some of the scenes, especially with Fatima.

Despite its difficulty, you managed to inject some humor into a very serious story. I believe in comic relief because the movie is so dark. Maybe we can make the audience smile, especially with Fatima, and also with Samaan, who is like a robot.

How do you see yourself progressing between "Withered Green" and now? I'm very happy with "Withered Green" and I'm very happy with "Safe Exit", but "Withered Green" was me then and "Safe Exit" is me now. I don't know about the third movie [laughs]. But what I learned is how to entertain people. Because with cinema it's still important to be entertaining. Even though "Safe Exit" is dark and deals with a very serious and very sensitive topic, we can still make some of it fun!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.