Women to Follow in 2020

by Aya Aboshady, Nada Abdelkader & Nanise Mohamed

Some days, we wake up feeling like we need a little more. A little more inspiration, some courage, and heaps of ambition. We’re sure you’ve felt like you need some of that too and this is why we’ve brought you stories full of all these ingredients and much more.

Marianne Khoury

Last year a lot of women emerged in the Egyptian entertainment scene, making 2019, evidently, the year of women. Super talented actresses, singers, models, athletes and writers have surfaced and made the entire female gender in Egypt proud. While most of them are, relatively, young fresh faces, we can’t overlook the comeback of one directing veteran that is Marianne Khoury.

Marianne Khoury, aged 62, is an Alexandrian-born filmmaker, director and distributor. She is the niece of the late directing legend Youssif Chahine. She collaborated with her late uncle on his films for a time period that spanned over three decades in movies like “Eskendrya Kaman W Kaman” and “El Youm El Sades”

Khoury earned a degree in economics from both Cairo and Oxford Universities. But since the love for cinema basically runs in the whole family, it wasn’t long until she pursued her true passion and followed in the footsteps of her senior family members.

Khoury produced and co-produced more than 30 award-winning films and documentaries. Some of them are “Araq El Balah”, “Zaman Laura” and “Zelal” which received critical acclaim and was an official entry in the Venice Film Festival and a winner of the FIPRESCI award at the Dubai Film Festival.

However, it’s her 2019 feature film “Let’s Talk” that really made her shine this year and reminded everyone of “Aflam Masr El Alameya” like the 32 March 2020

power production company it is. In the movie, we see no acting and no set.

The movie is more of a documentary that was first meant to be about the life of Iris, Marianne’s mother and Youssef Chahine’s sister; but at the end it turned out to be the story of all the women in that family. From the younger generation to the elder. It turned out to be the story of all Egyptian women.

Marianne has masterfully managed to turn simple live events into a universal story about love, family and loss. More importantly, through the way the film traced back the women in Chahine’s family, it ended up drawing beautiful portraits of Egypt from the past to the present.

At the end, we would like to thank Marianne for sharing something so personal and for making it about everyone, too. We hope she continues making great movies.

Logina Salah

Beauty seldom, if ever, has one specific appearance. It’s an everchanging ideal, something that we can now clearly witness through the many body positivity campaigns that are trying to change the country’s age old perceptions. Beauty no longer means skinny or light-skinned—beauty has many shapes and forms and one of them is embodied through Logina Salah.

You might be familiar with Logina Salah through Facebook and other social media and news outlets because she recently broke barriers after being assigned as an Abu Dhabi TV news reporter. Before we can get to that happy ending, though, let’s go back in time just a little bit. Logina grew up as a fairly normal girl from Alexandria, whose day centered around school and sports practices at the club until one fateful day. At eight years old, Logina contracted psoriasis, an autoimmune disease that meant her immune system was now attacking mal and healthy cells and tissues alike. After the rash that came with Logina’s psoriasis faded, her skin was left decorated with white spots that kept spreading everywhere, eventually signaling the vitiligo Logina now knows all too well. Because of the times, it’s safe to say that kids weren’t the most aware or kind to Logina during school, where she was subjected to all kinds of bullying incidents. Some children and their parents wouldn’t even interact with her, fearing that her condition might be contagious. school for makeup and cosmetics, where she became a licensed makeup artist and kicked off her journey into the professional makeup world. Logina’s career started smoothly, all except for one setback. When working with brides, she would never let the wedding photographers take photos during the makeup session, ashamed and uncomfortable with her own skin. All until two years ago when one of Logina’s friends convinced her to embrace her appearance and let photographers do their thing, assuring her that she has a unique look. Logina took this advice and hasn’t looked back since, and even stopped using makeup to hide her vitiligo. Two years later, with a YouTube channel, a few magazine covers, and a new job as a news reporter on Abu Dhabi TV, we can safely say that Logina doesn’t regret a thing. Currently, Logina busies her time with her career and family. She hopes to be an international public speaker and start her own makeup line in the future.

Because of her skin condition and the bullying that followed, Logina lost a good chunk of her self-confidence and turned to makeup in an effort to hide her vitiligo and blend in. And this is where the story gets interesting.

If anything makes it clear that through the toughest times, there will always be a silver lining, it’s Logina’s story with makeup. True, she did turn to it as a way of hiding and blending in but as she learned more about makeup techniques and self-expression, Logina learned more about accepting herself.

Her interests in beauty and makeup grew, naturally, making Logina turn down jobs in finance and banking—her college major—and travel to the United States to attend a New York-based

Sandra Serag

toxic relationship but ends up more tied down than ever before.

After the big success of her first novella, exactly a year later, Serag released one of the most popular Arabic novels in the past couple of years titled “Ma La Nabouh Beh” (2018). It tells the tale of a young woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after leaving a toxic relationship and realizes that she needs to choose and love herself first before she can let anyone else do so.

This story stuck with many and even though it was published in 2018, people still look for it, buy it and read it to this day. Last October, it reached the 23rd edition. While “Ila Ma La Nehaya” (2019), her third novel, reached its 18th edition in the same month.

With every Cairo International Book Fair, we witness the rise of new talented Egyptian writers; a lot of which are young female writers who continue to take the fair by storm one year after another. One young woman, in specific, has now released four very successful novels and she’s only 24 years old! Her name is Sandra Serag and her popularity is quite remarkable because the words she writes and the worlds she creates in her novels led a large number of readers to always tune in whenever she tweets something, let alone release a new book. Serag studies Psychology at Alexandria University and her passion for writing took her from writing online opinionated pieces on different social media platforms to having four bestsellers. In 2017, Serag got her first ever novella “Sa’ar7al” published by Dawen. The story revolves around a young girl who’s trying her best to escape a very “Ila Ma La Nehaya” is a mythical novel about an intense love story where reality is mixed with imagination. It also employs history and legend. And because it was such a different genre for readers these days, it got some great feedback right away on all social media platforms. That clearly shows how much young readers are captivated by Serag’s words and can hardly get enough that they go out every chance they get to lay their hands on her newest releases. The 24-year-old published her fourth and most recent book titled “Ma Rawah El-Bahr” (2020) last January, in time for the 56th edition of the Cairo International Book Fair. And needless to say, the book matched all expectations; the amount of people who showed up for the signing was only testament to its huge success. The book’s plot takes us through a rollercoaster of emotions and an intense and dramatic love story told by none other than the sea itself. Setting an example at 24, Sandra Serag is an inspiration who always presents us with something different, unique, artsy and full of love. 34 March 2020

Menna Elkeiy

If there’s one thing we’re pretty certain of, it’s this; young women are moving mountains all over the world now. Young Egyptian women in particular, are challenging so many stereotypes and are standing tall in the face of anyone who doubts them.

Menna Adli El-Keiy is definitely one of those young Egyptian women. And her undeniable talent is just not recognized enough.

So in celebration of International Women’s Day, we decided to remind you of Menna and the all wonderful things she does!

Menna Adli El-Keiy is a 29 year old Egyptian freelance writer and lyricist who graduated from the American University in Cairo (AUC) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication.

She’s also the daughter of Adli El-Keiy, one of ElAhly El-Masry’s legends, who’s currently also the contracting committee advisor responsible for some of the biggest transfer deals in the club’s history.

Menna is a talented lyricist who worked on a large number of significant ad campaigns and advertisements that hit millions and millions of views on different platforms. We’re pretty sure you know at least 10 songs she’s written.

The 29 year old’s song lyrics often turn from being part of TV and internet ads to actual hits people end up singing at the top of their lungs in cars and parties.

Her works include writing the song lyrics for: • Etisalat Misr 2018 Ad “Akwa Kart F Masr” feat. Mohamed Ramadan. • Etisalat Misr 2018 Ad “Wes3et Menena” feat. Mohamed Ramadan, Samira Saeid, Ahmed Fahmi, Sherine Reda, Aly El-Haggar and Nelly Karim. • SWVL 2018 Ad “Welad El-Lazina” feat.

Mahmoud El-Esseily and Abdelbaset Hamouda. • 7UP Food Confusion Song 2019 feat. Ahmed Fahmy. • Orange Ramadan 2019 “Tefrek Ketir” feat. Tamer Hosny and Nancy Ajram. • Uber Egypt 2019 Ad “Teer Beena Ya 3am” feat. Cairokee and Abdelbaset Hamouda.

So she pretty much worked on all your favorite ad campaigns over the last few years.

All of those accomplishments and we’re nowhere near done. Menna has also written the lyrics for the opening song of Chico and Hesham Maged’s Ramadan 2019 TV series “El-Le3ba”. And was the mastermind behind the U-23 AFCON opening ceremony song feat. Sharmoofers and Nesma Mahgoub.

It’s worth mentioning that Menna, the multi talented monster, is also a content developer and TV show programmer. She worked on the “Bibo” show that aired in 2017 on DMC about El-Ahly’s legend, Mahmoud El-Khatib.