The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Yassin Koptan is a talented 24-year-old producer and a graduate of the prestigious New York Film Academy with a degree in Film Making. He is currently famous for producing a music video for Cairokee. Koptan also produced a short movie titled “Hetet Khashaba” (Piece of Wood), which was screened at Cannes Film Festival and the Arab Film Festival, and was nominated for an award at the Austin Film Festival. He was also worked alongside famous director Tony Kaye, who is known for directing the movie American History X. All of these achievements, at such a young age, made us curious about the beginning of Koptan’s journey. So, we decided to reach out to him.

Koptan is a 90s kid who found himself passionate about skateboarding, in a society where the sport was not famous and practising it was frowned upon. Indeed, his film Hetet Khashaba takes skateboarding culture in Egypt as its main subject. Taking us back down ,memory lane, to the time of the 25th of January Revolution to be specific, Koptan told us that this was when he managed to find his “soft power”. He wanted to capture the real moments behind everything that was happening at the time, and that’s how he realised he was better behind the camera than in front of it (before that, Koptan had made an on-screen appearance in the film Microphone).

The 24-year-old also owns a successful production company. Called “Kitchen Films”, the company mainly produces movies and is also an online distributor. Koptan told us that without his parents’ support he wouldn’t have come this far. He is currently working on a project that will be aired on Netflix. This project is what brought him back to Egypt.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that he is abandoning his dreams of working in LA and Hollywood completely. Indeed, Koptan is looking to take Egyptian art to the LA world, and introduce Hollywood to the Egyptian entertainment industry.

What also makes Koptan stand out from other filmmakers is the fact that he has stopped watching movies for the past two years. This is because he wants his work to be as real and original as possible. He doesn’t want to fall into the trap of becoming “too inspired” by anything or anyone. When asked, Koptan said his future goal is to simply keep trying to be real to himself, by doing the things that he loves to do the most.

 

 

 

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A post shared by Yassin Koptan (@yassinkoptan) on Sep 25, 2018 at 12:41am PDT

We can say that Yassin Koptan is a 24-year-old free spirit with so much potential, and that one day he will make us all even more proud of him than we currently are.