Director Marwan Hamed won the Best Director award at the 38th Fantasporto - Oporto International Film Festival in Portugal for his film The Originals. This comes a few days after Hamed won the Special Jury award for the same film at the 66th Egyptian Catholic Center Cinema Festival.

The Originals is the fourth feature film by Marwan Hamed. Written by Ahmed Mourad as his first screenplay, the film is a co-production of Red Star and New Century Production and it features an all-star cast including Menna Shalaby, Maged El Kedwany and Kinda Alloush, together with Khaled El Sawy and Mohamed Mamdouh, who worked before with Hamed in The Blue Elephant (2014), and DOP Ahmad Al Morsy.

Marwan Hamed has recently finished shooting his new film Diamond Dust, based on a novel with the same title by writer Ahmed Mourad, who also wrote the film's screenplay. Diamond Dust features Menna Shalaby, Shereen Reda, Asser Yassin, Eyad Nassar, Sabreen, Maged El Kedwany and Ahmed Kamal.