Documentary Boody: The Sumo Pharaoh to Screen at Zawya Cinema for the Fourth Time on Tuesday

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Due to High Audience Demand

Documentary Boody: The Sumo Pharaoh to Screen at Zawya Cinema for the Fourth Time on Tuesday


Due to the high audience demand after three full-house screenings, the documentary film Boody: The Sumo Pharaoh will screen at Zawya Cinemas, Downtown, for the fourth time, on Tuesday, March 19, at 07:00 pm.

The film also received wide from film critics, such as Mahmoud Abdel Shakour who posted on his Facebook page, "A good film about the first Egyptian professional Sumo champion in Japan. Sarah Riad succeeded in portraying the success story of the son of Dakahlia, Abdul Rahman Sha'lan. She managed to explain that cultural differences cannot prevent creativity. It is a film that is worthy of appreciation."

In Al Gomhuria Newspaper, Film Critic Hussam Hafez wrote, "The director succeeded in introducing the film's protagonist to the audience by using documentary footage of the game and the matches that the champ played. I think it is the first time that the audience is demanding a re-screening of a documentary film, and this confirms the audience's longing for that different genre of films."

Recently, MAD Solutions released the film's official trailer through its Facebook page on the following link: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=658295294602269

The film received the Best Feature Documentary at the Annual Copenhagen Film Festival (CPH: DOX), and was screened in several film festivals, including: Largo Film Awards, Switzerland, Ouchy Film Awards (OFA), Switzerland, Independent Days International Filmfest, Oran International Arabic Film Festival, Philadelphia Independent Film Awards, USA, Lisbon Film Festival, Polish International Film Festival, Egyptian National Film Festival, and Sharm El Sheikh Film Festival.

Boody: The Sumo Pharaoh tells the story of Boody, nicknamed Ōsunaarashi (Japanese for The Great Sandstorm), who is the first Egyptian sumo wrestler to make it to the professional Sumo world in Japan. The documentary follows Boody's story from his beginnings in a small Egyptian countryside village all the way to Tokyo as he becomes the very first Egyptian to become a professional Sumo wrestler. The film is directed by Sarah Riad and distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions.

Sarah Riad is an Egyptian-Japanese filmmaker. She majored in Media Studies at two different universities in Egypt and Japan, but she dropped out of both. The, she decided to begin her own journey of self-learning. She has been working as an independent filmmaker and writer since 2012 after training by working on many documentaries, TV shows and short films, as well as vlogging different events. In the end, she began writing and directing her first project.

Among her noteworthy projects is the short film El Film Da Haram, which caused quite the sensation in the Arab and Islamic region after it was released on YouTube in 2012, and it received more than 600 thousand views. It was also aired on one of the most popular television stations in Egypt twice. Sarah Riad also wrote and directed the short film Soulless in 2013, which was selected at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth in Seattle, Washington, USA, in 2014.