Long before Karim Abdel Aziz became one of Egyptian cinema’s biggest leading men, he was preparing for a very different career behind the camera.
Two films directed by Abdel Aziz during his years at the Higher Institute of Cinema will be screened at the fourth edition of the Hurghada Youth Film Festival, giving audiences a rare opportunity to revisit the actor’s beginnings as a directing student.
The festival will run from September 10 to 15, 2026, with the films included in a retrospective program dedicated to graduation projects and early works by established Egyptian filmmakers and artists.
Karim Abdel Aziz Studied Film Directing Before Becoming an Actor
While Abdel Aziz is now primarily known for films and series including The Blue Elephant, Kira & El Gin and Al Hashashin, his formal film education was actually in directing.
He joined the Higher Institute of Cinema in 1994 and graduated from its directing department in 1997. He briefly worked as an assistant director before ultimately moving in front of the camera and building his acting career.
The Hurghada screenings will therefore show audiences a side of Abdel Aziz’s career that many younger fans may never have seen.
Rather than screening one of the blockbusters that later made him a household name, the festival is returning to the period when he was still experimenting with filmmaking as a student.
‘Al-Thoqb Al-Aali’ Is One of the Two Films Being Screened
The first film in the program is Al-Thoqb Al-Aali, or The High Hole.
The student film stars Sayed Abdel Karim and Alaa Khamis, with a story by Mohamed Abdelrahman and a screenplay written by Tamer Habib, who would later become one of Egyptian film and television’s best-known screenwriters.
Abdel Aziz directed the project during his early years behind the camera, making it a particularly interesting artifact from a period before either he or several of his collaborators became widely recognized names.
Its screening offers audiences a chance to see the beginnings of an artist now associated almost entirely with acting.
His Graduation Film ‘Lawha Min Lahm’ Will Also Return to the Screen
The second film is even more closely connected to Abdel Aziz’s film-school journey.
Titled Lawha Min Lahm — roughly translated as A Painting of Flesh — the production was his graduation project at the Higher Institute of Cinema.
The film stars Ehab Fahmy, Mirna Walid and Saudi actor Khaled El Harby, with a screenplay by Ali Shawky.
According to festival reports, the story focuses on young people facing uncertainty about their futures, exploring the pressures, choices and challenges that come with entering adult life.
Seen nearly three decades after it was made, the film could provide an unusual look at the themes and filmmaking interests Abdel Aziz was exploring before acting became the defining direction of his career.
A Rare Look at Karim Abdel Aziz Behind the Camera
The screenings are notable precisely because Abdel Aziz did not go on to build the directing career his studies initially suggested.
Following graduation, he moved increasingly toward acting and eventually became one of the most commercially successful stars of his generation.
His early credits eventually led to leading roles in films such as Haramia Fi KG2, El Basha Telmiz and Abu Ali, before later projects including The Blue Elephant, The Blue Elephant 2, Kira & El Gin and Al Mashrou X further established his box-office profile.
That makes Al-Thoqb Al-Aali and Lawha Min Lahm something of a cinematic time capsule: films from an alternate beginning to a career audiences now know very differently.
Some coverage of the festival has even described the two works as Abdel Aziz’s first and last directing experiences, reflecting how quickly his professional path shifted toward acting.
Hurghada Festival Revisits the Beginnings of Major Filmmakers
Abdel Aziz’s films are being presented as part of a wider program that has become one of the Hurghada Youth Film Festival’s recurring features.
The initiative showcases student films and graduation projects created by artists and directors before they became established figures in Egyptian cinema.
Festival president Mohamed El-Basousy said the program is intended to connect different generations of filmmakers, allowing current students to examine the ideas, conditions and creative environments in which previous generations began their careers.
Festival director Kadry El-Haggar similarly said the screenings can show young filmmakers that major careers often begin with relatively modest student projects driven by ambition and experimentation.
The program is organized annually in cooperation with the Higher Institute of Cinema, according to festival artistic director Gihan Abdel Latif Badr. Previous screenings have reportedly drawn strong attendance from film students and general audiences.
Ashraf Fayek’s Graduation Film Is Also Part of the Program
Karim Abdel Aziz will not be the only established filmmaker whose student work is revisited during the festival.
The program will also screen director Ashraf Fayek’s graduation film Yahya El Adl.
The film stars Athar El-Hakim, Ahmed Bedier, Mohamed Henedy, Mohamed Tawfik, Mofeed Ashour and Ashraf Tolba. Its story follows an elderly man who is injured in a road accident and a journalist who attempts to help him, only to become caught up in a series of unexpected problems herself.
Including projects by different generations and filmmakers is part of the festival’s wider attempt to make early student cinema accessible again instead of allowing those works to remain largely unseen in institutional archives.
Hurghada Youth Film Festival Returns for Its Fourth Edition
The Hurghada Youth Film Festival will hold its fourth edition from September 10 through September 15, 2026.
Launched in 2023, the festival focuses particularly on young filmmakers and emerging cinematic talent while also hosting screenings, industry discussions and filmmaking workshops.
Its graduation-project retrospective creates an unusual meeting point between those emerging filmmakers and some of the established names they may now look up to.
In Abdel Aziz’s case, that connection is particularly fitting.
Today’s film students know him as the star at the center of some of Egyptian cinema’s biggest contemporary productions. The films being screened in Hurghada instead introduce Karim Abdel Aziz the student — still learning how to tell stories from behind the camera in the 1990s.
Before the Stardom, There Was a Film Student
For audiences accustomed to seeing Abdel Aziz commanding the screen, the Hurghada program offers something significantly different.
Al-Thoqb Al-Aali and Lawha Min Lahm capture a moment before the major films, box-office records and decades of stardom — when Abdel Aziz was still studying directing and figuring out which side of the camera his future would ultimately be on.
Nearly 30 years after his 1997 graduation, those early experiments are returning to a festival screen.
And for younger filmmakers attending the Hurghada Youth Film Festival, they offer a reminder that even one of Egyptian cinema’s biggest stars once started with a student film, a camera and an idea of where his career might go next.
