Egypt has selected The Stories, directed by Abu Bakr Shawky, as its official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards. The film is deeply personal for Shawky, drawing inspiration from how his Egyptian father and Austrian mother first fell in love as pen pals.
Set against the backdrop of Egypt’s turbulent years from the late 1960s through the 1980s, the film follows an aspiring Egyptian concert pianist, played by Amir El-Masry, who connects with a young Austrian woman, played by Valerie Pachner, through a pen-pal scheme in 1967. What begins as a long-distance friendship, viewed with suspicion by his relatives, slowly grows into something deeper, with the young woman encouraging him to pursue his musical ambitions despite the distance, family pressure and shifting political backdrop around them.
The film unfolds across five interconnected stories, with time gaps between them, blending archival footage of political speeches, football matches and old radio broadcasts with dramatized scenes.
The Stories is led by Amir El-Masry, the British-Egyptian actor known for The Crown and MobLand, alongside Austrian actress Valerie Pachner, known for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and Egyptian star Nelly Karim, known for Voy! Voy! Voy!. They are joined by Ahmed Kamal, Karim Kassem, Sabry Fawaz, Sherif El Dessouky, Khaled Mokhtar, Ahmed El Azaar and Amr Abed.
Abu Bakr Shawky studied political science at the American University in Cairo before training in film directing at the High Institute of Cinema in Cairo. He later earned a Master of Fine Arts in film and television production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
He began his career with short films, including the documentary The Colony and Things I Heard on Wednesdays, before making his feature debut with Yomeddine in 2018. The film competed at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to become Egypt’s Oscar submission that year. He followed it with Hajjan, a Saudi-set camel-racing drama that premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival in 2023. The Stories marks his third feature and is written and directed by Shawky himself.
The Stories world premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia in November 2025, where a packed post-screening Q&A reflected the anticipation surrounding Shawky’s earlier work. The film went on to win the Golden Tanit for Best Film at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia before screening again at the Red Sea International Film Festival last December. It later opened theatrically in Egypt in June and in France in July this year.
Egypt has submitted a film for the Best International Feature category almost every year over the past two decades, including Clash, Sheikh Jackson, Yomeddine and last year’s Happy Birthday, but has yet to land an actual nomination in the category. The Egyptian Academy has often leaned toward selecting topical, sometimes locally controversial films for its submissions, and The Stories, with its politically layered, decades-spanning narrative, continues that pattern.
Egypt’s selection places The Stories among dozens of national entries now being considered for the Best International Feature Film category. It is not yet an Oscar nomination, but the selection marks the next step on the road toward the 99th Academy Awards. The ceremony is scheduled to take place on March 14 in Los Angeles. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is set to announce the shortlist for the category in December, ahead of the final nominations early next year.
With The Stories now representing Egypt in the international feature race, Shawky’s deeply personal retelling of his parents’ cross-cultural romance enters a crowded field of national submissions, carrying with it a festival run that has already taken the film from Tallinn to Tunisia to the Red Sea.