Stuart Ford’s AGC International has taken global rights outside the Middle East and Pakistan to “Voy! Voy! Voy!” the hit dramedy about a group of impoverished Egyptians who join a professional blind soccer team as a ploy to get to Europe. The film is Egypt’s candidate for the International Feature Film Oscar.
“Voy! Voy! Voy!,” which marks the directorial debut of hotshot Egyptian commercials director Omar Hilal, is the tale of a financially struggling security guard named Hassan who dreams of a better life. One day he stumbles upon the professional sport of blind soccer and cunningly decides to pose as a visually impaired man to join a team that is close to playing a World Cup tournament in Europe. On this journey Omar intersects with several characters, including a female journalist who begins to take an interest in the team.
The dramedy is inspired by true events. In 2015, a team of blind Egyptian athletes travelled to Poland to take part in a tournament for goalball, a sport specifically designed for the visually impaired. As soon as the team arrived in Poland, several of its players vanished and it became clear they had merely used to tournament as a way to make their way to Europe.
“Voy! Voy! Voy!” is produced by Egypt’s prominent indie shingle Film Clinic in tandem with Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region exhibition giant VOX Studios and Image Nation Abu Dhabi.
Released across 10 MENA region countries in September, the film has been a critical and commercial hit, dominating the box office for six weeks in Egypt and for five weeks across the Middle East. To date “Voy! Voy! Voy! has generated $5.5 million in global box office revenue and is still playing to packed movie houses in the region. It will next be released across Tunisia and Algeria on Nov. 22.
“Voy! Voy! Voy!” continues AGC’s collaboration with Image Nation Abu Dhabi to bring Arabic-language content to worldwide theatrical audiences, following their collaboration as co-producers and distributors on action film “The Ambush” (“Al Kameen”), directed by Pierre Morel, which is touted as the biggest Arabic-language feature film production ever shot in the Gulf.