MAD Solutions is the first Pan-Arab independent studio and fully integrative marketing and creative consultancy for the Arab film and Entertainment Industry. Under the umbrella of MAD Solutions, the studio is supported by five pillars: MAD Marketing, MAD Content, MAD Distribution, MAD Culture and MAD Celebrity, which together are helping to usher in an exciting new generation of Arab filmmakers and entertainment talent. MAD Solutions attends each year all the major film festivals (Arab and International), summits, and workshops, including Cannes, Berlinale, DIFF, ADFF, Toronto, Locarno. Realizing the potential growth of the film industry in the Gulf States and the opportunities to hatch a pan-regional strategy, MAD Solutions has expanded to Abu Dhabi, UAE, focusing on the GCC in specific and the Arab world as a whole. We are thrilled to become industry partners. They also attend the first edition of the Red Sea Festival. During the festival, we had a chance to speak with two co-founders of the company, Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab, to know more of their visions of the company, the works done in the past and their revolutionary visions for the future.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you say a little bit about your company and introduce your company to our readers?
Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab (AK&MD): We started MAD Solutions in early 2010, almost 13 years ago. It consists of 5 divisions specializing in the entertainment business. We have MAD Distribution, which focuses on business discussions and distribution of Arab films. So far, we’ve worked on more than 340 Arab films since we started, including shorts and features, fiction and documentary. Another division is MAD Celebrities, in which we manage talents including actors, directors, writers, DOPs, TV presenters, costume designers, etcetera. Within MAD Celebrities there’s a unit called MAD Rising Celebrities for new talents. We take care of the positioning, promotion, publicity, and of course, managing their work.
MAD Marketing does marketing for films, TV series, companies, in-house, of course, doing promotion material. MAD Content focuses on providing content for media outlets, productions, subtitling, and working with NGOs. And we also have Mad Culture, which works with institutions, universities, and festivals, either as consultants on structure or advising on the right strategy and position for culture in national TV.
Our main operations are based in Cairo, Egypt. We have a branch in Abu Dabhi and recently launched a branch in Lisbon, Portugal because we want to take more productions into Europe, to push more Arab content internationally, network on the ground and take our talents internationally.
In 2015, we established a non-profit organization called Arab Cinema Center to promote Arab cinema because as we know, Arab governments don’t regularly support Arab cinema in general—it’s usually more about specific countries. So, we joined forces with other companies, festivals, platforms, and organizations to create a circuit every year, going to about 24 film festivals around the world to market our projects, either through a physical presence by having a booth at Cannes, Berlin, and Toronto, for example, or by having a partnership.
For example, we take a project on the market and we go create the Latin Arab co-production forum to open up with Latin America because all of the focus is in Europe, which is important, but there are other areas in the world. Under Arab Cinema Center, we created the Critics Awards for Arab films which consists of more than 160 critics from more than 60 nationalities. The awards ceremony takes place every year at Cannes. We also created the Arab Critics Awards for European films, a partnership with the European Film Promotion, and we give out the awards annually during the Cairo International Film Festival.
We also do a magazine, printing three editions per year, to provide data on Arab cinema and who’s making it, plus many other activities. Of course, as Arab Cinema Center we give an award at the Cairo Film Festival as well. We choose a producer and take them to participate in the Rotterdam festival.
(UM): I like that you named your company MAD Solutions. I’m curious, where did the idea for this name come from?
(AK&MD): Because first you need an attractive name and we thought anyone working in the Arab film industry must be somehow mad (laughing). And you need mad solutions to work and to survive in this industry. So, it came from ‘mad’ because it’s not easy to create something, but also you need a ‘mad solution’ to fill the gap or to work on something complicated, that nobody’s worked on before, and that’s why we chose it.
(UM): And then, when you are mentioning for example Arab regions, what are the specific regions that you have in mind?
(AK&MD): The whole of the Arab-speaking countries, Arab countries…
(UM): And also included, Arab directors who are living abroad?
(AK&MD): Yeah. Of course. In distribution, we work in the region and we sell and distribute in the region and Arab-speaking countries. It is more about the content of the film. Maybe the filmmaker has Arab origins or maybe the filmmaker is not Arab at all. We don’t have such super restricted criteria for this. Plus, we also work on some international films from time to time, though not to the same extent as Arab films. In terms of distribution, we are limited mostly to the Arab countries which is normal.
(UM): When you say you are trying to promote Arab content, do you have any kind of unified understanding or unified goals about what you mean by promoting Arab culture?
(AK&MD): It’s not Arab culture, it’s more Arab content when we refer to our films. For the criteria, sometimes you have many films and they can be directed by international names, and they have nothing to do with any origins from the Arab world. But the content itself is Arab, these are Arab films. We haven’t signed yet, but there’s a Swiss film called “Neighbours,” and it’s Swiss but the film has an Arabic angle. We haven’t finalized it yet, we want the film and it screened here but this is just an example. The criteria is not specific in that they need to show the culture or it needs to be made by an Arab director. Our films contain different Arab stories, Arab characters in the film, or are made by Arabs. It’s not promoting the country, it’s the same as Arab Cinema Center, or the European Film Promotion promoting European films or talents or supporting film sales during festivals. It’s not about nationality or not about nationalism, it’s more about that you have the power of one language in the Arab world, so it makes sense to unify it as our content.
(UM): And in terms of distribution, was it through theatrical release or is it through online platforms?
(AK&MD): Everything. It’s for rights. We get almost all the rights for every film we work on whether it’s theatrical, VOT, SVOT, and pay-tv, free-to-air, and all rights.
(UM): I have already a good understanding of the Coronavirus and its impact in North America, as it changed totally the landscape of film distribution. How was the impact here in Arab countries?
(AK&MD): It’s had effects, of course. The first effect was we delayed many of our films to apply for festivals because Cannes didn’t happen, Locarno as well, Comox Valley, only Venice, and Toronto didn’t happen, and we are talking about 2020. So, because of this, we were delaying almost more than one year key films which were invested in monthly. So there was delay regardless of whether the cinemas closed or not. Then, of course, the cinemas closed so you keep delaying the films. It had an effect but it was more a delay that your investment should be back within a year, but now it’s within more than two years or three years. Of course, if we were only working on film distribution, the hit would’ve been much bigger, but we work in many sectors of the business.
I believe as sales and distribution, we are lucky compared with theatres. Anyone that has theatres, huge investments, that was a big close. But if you’re only delaying the films, it wasn’t super tough, and plus in Egypt it was easier compared with the Gulf countries in terms of cinemas. Yes, in Egypt they reduced capacities to 25% and 50% but the difficulty was more in the Gulf countries actually.
(UM): You mention you also have a partnership with festivals and you offer some kind of awards for distribution. Can you say more about this kind of support and how it works, and how you choose projects for the awards?
(AK&MD): We’re offering awards at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, and at the Red Sea Film Festival we’re offering as MAD awards $50,000 as MG (minimum guarantee). We try our best with this award to select films that may be more from first-timers, or films coming from not the unusual countries. Why we’re doing this, it gives more value for those projects, you’re putting investment into a position that’s not cheap films, cheap in terms of pricing. For example, when we gave an MG for an Indonesian film. We worked with the director before, this recent film called “Strange.” It was at a caravan festival and won the best actress award. So we felt this filmmaker is talented, we need to support his film as well. It’s really about showing this interest because this is the important part of the business side. There’s interest from us who are investing in Arab films and specific projects, even if it’s not easy to gain big prices out of it.
(UM): And your award is a kind of MG—minimum guarantee?
(AK&MD): No, this minimum guarantee plus we will spend from our side on the advertising and agreement with the producer, and we will do the promotion material for free as a support for the film. So you are giving them in advance financing for the film and they don’t need to think about any extra expenses besides finishing the film itself. And sometimes we give awards to help films if they have improved on post-production or to find the right partner, we do as much as we can. But of course, we commit to the MG and the advertising budget and the promotion material.
(UM): You’ve talked about Cannes and other features you’ve had in the past year. Compared to Cannes, how did you find the market at the Red Sea Festival? And considering that this is also the first year, how was your experience of this year’s market at the Red Sea?
(AK&MD): We’ve needed that, to have a film festival in the Gulf countries. We really miss the Dubai Festival. We’re having meetings and negotiations. In the last edition of Dubai we had 25 films as a company in the old festival. So we’ve needed to not have to count on one festival because you need many festivals about to get the films separate positions in each festival. El Gouna and Cairo Film Festival are both doing great but they are in the same country, and this is a problem especially for the non-Egyptian films and even the Egyptian films because you need that target audience who attends the film festivals, and they are the biggest or the highly-organized film festivals and they are poor. Qatar is very important as an audience. The biggest in terms of audience, they sell around 250,000 tickets per year. But unfortunately, this is not reflected in the cinemas or theatres, it’s only during the festival and that’s why it’s not adding up for any of the films that much. The old style is important but it’s not adding much. Starting the Red Sea Festival, it means you have access to a possible and potential new audience, theatres of course, and new income for the films. Plus for the audience and for the media here to get used to covering the unusual films, unusual I mean the non-Egyptian. But to decide now the Red Sea’s importance is still early. I believe we need another two years to see a real effect in the market which is normal. We’re just starting this, the country was super close a few years ago, it’s as if we’re starting from scratch. Not like Dubai, even when they started the festivals. But I believe this is very important still. The market was important in terms of networking and meeting people. Maybe they need to have more promotions for the films to get more audiences. We were expecting a better audience honestly, but it’s the first edition so let’s see what will happen next year.
(UM): And you mentioned Asian, what about Busan, is Busan helping in terms of some distribution of Arab film?
(AK&MD): Until now, it’s not a big help. We keep trying to get into the Asian market which is more complicated, but we keep working on this. The problem with Busan or the Asian film festivals, unfortunately, is there’s not enough coverage for it. Most of the media doesn’t care to cover Asian festivals and there’s almost zero media. We tried before, we participated in the Hong Kong film market, in the Tokyo film festival. We’re trying from time to time to go there. But the industry, all the media, they’re not interested. They don’t go there at all and part of it, to have a foot there, you need someone regular attending there to build relations, to understand the market, which we’re trying to do. Hopefully, not this year, if Covid is clearly out, we would start again to push there. But we didn’t get any added value for the Arab films if nobody showed up. The media care mainly about Cannes, Berlin, Venice of course, and much on Toronto in terms of coverage, in terms of people aware of it. Hopefully, we’ll change that next year because Asia I believe is a very important market for us, for Arab films.
(UM): I see that you have a very close relationship with the Cairo film festival, can you say more about this relationship?
(AK&MD): As Arab Cinema Center, we created the Cairo Industry Days which is a platform to have panel discussions, to have Cairo film connections, to support the projects. We help to bring some partners to give an award in Cairo from the connections. We help together to put the right ideas and people to attend the festivals. We created the partnership with the European Film Promotion to have them in our Critics Awards for European films. And the official Cairo film festivals are really good. And we give an award either as Arab Cinema Center or as MAD. Now, as MAD films there’s no partnership, it’s more about applying for the festival as it is and they have the committee and they choose. But it’s more about the work with Arab Cinema Center to have a place and venue for the Arab film industry every year. This started, it would be the fourth year last year actually.
(UM): And in terms of films that you decide to distribute and produce, I’ve seen that you have both commercial films and art house films.
(AK&MD): Most of them are Art house independent films. It includes commercial films but not extremely commercial films. For example, in this festival there are two commercial films from Jordan. “The Alias” is in the official competition and was selected by Locarno to be screened in Piazza Grande. Piazza Grande as you know is more for the audience, then the film went to London which is an audience festival as well. This is a high-quality film with best-used materials, but it’s commercial. Same for “Daughters of Abdul Rahman” which was entered into national competition and it received the audience award. It’s not about categorizing the films as much as that we work on high-quality films from all the Arab world. But we don’t work on super commercial films which are mainly Egyptian films. We do marketing for these films, we work with the rest of the whole market and Asia to market these films. And it’s really the same as what we do, positioning and strategy for our films and our talents. We do also position our strategy for MAD itself. What is the preparation for the MAD distribution in terms of films, we want to keep it this way. And especially, all the time it’s about the bigger picture, it’s not about selecting 3 or 4 or 5 films, but how to convince the media, the buyers, the theatres, the audience that you can explore. For example, we keep films every year, except of course the Covid year, to release our best in theatres. We did themes for the films, shortlisted or nominated for the Oscars, another theme had celebrities, another theme directed by women. The old income is not great, it’s peanuts. But why are we doing this? It’s more about the bigger picture. It’s always fully booked and we sold out the tickets mostly, it’s single screenings from time to time. But it’s giving value to the shorts and for the films we have released.
(UM): And in terms of quota, do you have a special gender quota in the selection or do you care more about artistic quality?
(AK&MD): I don’t believe in gender quota, it’s more about the film. We cannot work based on that we have to add 50-50 because first, it doesn’t exist and you cannot even have this. We care about it but it’s not the priority. The priority is the films, the priority is the bigger picture of promoting Arab films.
(UM): And in terms of, for those that you mentioned that you are hoping to start co-production in Europe, what are you doing right now in terms of a production company? Are you starting from scratch or are you working mostly in the post-production process?
(AK&MD): It depends. For example, with the new film by Hanny Abu-Assad, it started when it was a script, first draft. We are part of the production and also we have its solution on our board. So it really depends on the film itself. We prefer to start super early, but sometimes it’s better to see the post-production compared with the beginning. In getting into production, it depends again on the project because the production side is not like the solution, the production side you need to be super clear that we believe 100% in this project to be part of it first. For example, with “Daughters of Abdul Rahman,” there are already 3 to 4 projects in the pipeline that we are finalizing to be part of the production. But it always has to be that we have the rights also in the Arab work and the Arab screening countries. We don’t have criterion that it needs to be finished or it needs to be in the script stage, it really depends on the project. For example, “The Allies,” we knew the film since it was a script. We didn’t sign it, but we knew we would work together on it, then we signed it when it was a rough cut. A big part of what we do is based on the relations and these friendships and the loyalty with everyone we worked with. You will find that most of the filmmakers we’ve worked with, we keep working together. For example with one filmmaker, we worked on his first film as producer and co-writer and it was nominated for the Oscars. Now we’re working on his first feature as director. It’s really about building this understanding and chemistry and working together with them.
(UM): This gives me the idea that, for example, if some independent filmmaker or independent talent wants to approach you, it would be more difficult. So you prefer to first build a relationship and then take him as your client?
(AK&MD): No. We work with first-timers, actually, and keep working with first-timers. There are no rules in this, it’s really about understanding whether the director has a clear vision or not. And it’s always taking risks, you have to take the risk, you have to gamble all the time. Even Hollywood which has the highest format keeps having flops, even with their format. You need to keep partaking in the risks.
(UM): And in terms of celebrities that you are working with, are they more actors, actresses? Can you say more about it?
(AK&MD): We have more than 40 we work with, most of the actors from different nationalities. There are directors, composers, writers, producers, production designers, costume designers, TV presenters, and in MAD rising talents you’ll find actors as well as directors. We have, for example, talent from Saudi Arabia we have been working with now for almost 2 years. And we keep adding the right talents as well from the Arab world. It’s the discretion of the bigger picture, you cannot focus only on one career which is acting, it’s about working too. And it’s not about having a record, a number of followers, it’s not about having the biggest exposure ever. No, it’s about having balance. But once you reach them, it matters. We also help the camera teams to reach more of their targets by entering them as members of different associations. Either as DOP, in Canada, Australia, America—this is helping them to go abroad as well.
(UM): I’m just curious to know if the Arab governments are interested or helping financially, or is there any organization that supports your mission?
(AK&MD): The government we have as one of the partners in Arab Cinema Center because everyone pays annual fees, and we have support from a commission by Jordan. That’s a government entity of course and they understand what we are doing and they support it. Except in the case of Jordan, you won’t find any governmental organizations with us from the Arab world because in all cases, they don’t believe in supporting cinema, even United Arab Emirates which is a wealthy country. They stopped all their film festivals. So far, the majority of the support coming in is from partners, companies, investors, organizations, and institutions.
(UM): And when you are talking about co-production with European or other countries, I know in some countries there are tax return or tax programs, is there something like this here in the Arab world?
(AK&MD): There’s a clear support program happening in Jordan, in Morocco, in the Emirates, and now I think they will announce it very soon in Saudi Arabia. It was announced actually a couple of years ago but obviously, there’s an update from it for the shooting in Saudi Arabia. The rest of the countries don’t yet have such a program, even in Asia.
(UM): At the end of the interview, I’m just curious if there is something you want to ask so that our leaders know about your organization and its mission?
(AK&MD): The main thing I want to ask is how really important is the idea of positional strategy away from the records, to achieve record numbers? Looking at the bigger picture like for the Red Sea now, we have 14 films in the official selection plus we have to award, we have a stand in the market. We have a big team to cover this. This is unusual. But the importance of it is you keep building for the long-term strategy. For people to get used to this in terms of celebrities, in terms of media, the festivals itself, the buyer, the audience, we just need to highlight that. I hope in five years to have a much, much stronger business model for Arab films because it’s a huge potential market. Annually, the entertainment business is more than $40 billion and we don’t have enough of that business yet. Every year we have only an average of a hundred features, feature-fiction. This is nothing compared with Asia, or Europe. I believe there is huge potential in Arab content and we need to incorporate it more on the film side.