Khairy Beshara (, ; born June 30, 1947, in Tanta, Egypt) is an Egyptian film director active in the Egyptian film industry since the 1970s. He is considered one of the Egyptian directors who re-defined Realism in Egyptian cinema in the 1980s. In a recent book published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2007 about the most important 100 films in the history of Egyptian cinema, three of his movies were listed: The Collar and the Bracelet, Bitter Day, Sweet Day, and Ice Cream in Gleem.
Biography
Beshara completed his high school in Cairo then joined the Higher Institute of Cinema, where he graduated in 1967. During his time there, he studied film directing under the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. He then went to Warsaw, Poland, on a fellowship for two years where he met his future wife, Monika Kowalczyk. He started his career with a focus on documentaries then moved to feature narratives and directed 12 long features that were screened at various international film festivals. He is one of the first Egyptian and Arab directors to venture into digital film making in the late 1990s. Beshara, among other new directors, was at the forefront of a reimagined take on realism in Egyptian cinema in the 1980s. His films shifted focus from previous realist films and embraced a different filming method. Beshara chose smaller scale subjects and favoured on-site filming.
Career
Beshara was part of a new generation of directors that writers and film critics recognize as being at the forefront of a new wave of realism in Egyptian and Arab filmmaking in the 1980s. They diverted from the previous traditions of filmmaking by expressing their own creative ideas and embracing new technologies. This was influenced by the cultural and social conditions of the time. His contemporaries who were influential in this movement include Atef El-Tayeb, Mohamed Khan, Bashir El-Dik, and Daoud Abd El-Sayyed. He has been recognized for utilizing new digital techniques that stray from the traditional methods used in realist films from previous generations. Beshara's portfolio contains many films shot in the new realism style, as well as a series of documentaries and television shows.
Significant Works
Throughout his career, Beshara directed many feature films and documentaries, which have received recognition for being influential in the new wave of realism in Egyptian film. While directing this film, he embraced digital techniques, which launched a departure from the style of his previous work and that of his contemporaries. The film combined technological experimentation and an investigation into a deeper aesthetic narrative of the story. In addition, his film Traffic Light won the Silver Pyramid award at the Cario Film Festival.