Continuing a series of successes it has been experiencing since its first screening, Amr Salama’s Sheikh Jackson won two awards at the 44th Egyptian Cinema Film Association Festival.

Maged El-Kidwany won the Best Actor award for his role in the film, as the secondary main character, while Ahmed Malek won the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in the film.

Starring Ahmed El-Fishawy alongside the two award winners, the film tells the story of a strict Islamic cleric who has a hidden passion for Michael Jackson, which takes over him after he hears of Jackson’s death. While he used to be dubbed “Jackson” when he was in high school, Michael Jackson’s death sparks a series of questions inside the young cleric, forcing him into reconsidering who he really is and bringing back the memories of his love and friends from high school.

Sheikh Jackson was written and directed by Amr Salama and co-written by Omar Khaled. The film was produced by the companies The Producers, Film Clinic, and iProductions.

It was screened for the first time at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival within the Special Presentations programme. Locally, it made its Arab world premiere by opening at the first edition of El Gouna Film Festival, where it competed in the festival’s Feature Narrative Competition. It had its European premiere at the 61st BFI London Film Festival.

Sheikh Jackson also screened at the JCC Carthage Film Festival, Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), within the New Egyptian Cinema 2016-2017 section, and the Arab Cinema Week in New York. The Egyptian Cinema Syndicate selected Sheikh Jackson to be Egypt’s official submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was released in theatres in more than seven Arab countries.