Egypt grants citizenship to acclaimed filmmaker Mohamed Khan

Egypt granted citizenship Wednesday to one of its most renowned filmmakers, Mohamed Khan, a British national born to an Egyptian mother and a Pakistani father, the president's office said. Khan has been asking for the Egyptian citizenship for over a decade. Egyptian women married to foreigners were not allowed to pass on their citizenship to their children prior to a 2004 amendment to the nationality law. Khan has been one of Egypt's leading film directors since the 1980s, making a string of movies tackling social issues that have often revolved around female central characters. His latest film, Factory Girl, won two awards at the 2013 Dubai International Film Festival and went on release in Cairo on Wednesday. The film tells the story of Hiyam, a young factory worker living in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood of Cairo, who falls in love with her supervisor. Born in Cairo in 1942, Khan was educated in Britain before beginning his film career in the Egyptian capital in the 1960s as a script writer. The 71-year-old is one of Egypt’s most prominent directors belonging to a generation of neo-realist filmmakers that represented a hallmark in Egyptian cinema. Three of his films — El-Harreef (The Street Player, 1984), Zawgat Ragol Mohem (The Wife of an Important Man, 1987) and Ahlam Hind wa Camilia (Dreams of Hind and Camilia, 1988)—were named among the "100 Greatest Arab Films ofall time" by the Dubai International Film Festival. Source: Ahram Online