Biography
For more than twenty years, DOP/Director Ahmad Al Morsy has been working in the filmmaking industry making more than 50 films and over 2000 TV ads as a DOP, and recently as a director. Throughout his career, Al Morsy won 22 national and international awards for his work. Currently, Al Morsy is a member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers (CSC), in addition to the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS). Best known for his adaptability, Al Morsy has always kept pace with the latest developments in filming techniques and excelled in experimenting with new tools in filming TV ads and movies. In 2001, Al Morsy became the youngest DOP in Egypt with his debut film Violence And Sarcasm (Al Unf Wal Sokhrya), followed by Heads And Tails (Malek Wa Ketaba) in 2006. In 2010, he received three awards for his film Messages From The Sea (Rasa'el Al Bahr), Egypt's official submission to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Later, he was the DOP of Wahed Saheh (2011), Al Hafla (The Party) (2013), and then The Blue Elephant, which shattered previous records at the Egyptian box office in 2014. His film Aswar Al Amar (Walls of the Moon) is the second film in the world to be shot using ARRI D21 camera in 2009, where Al Morsy mixed between using digital cameras and 35 mm films. In 2017, Al Morsy repeated his collaboration with director Marwan Hamed and writer Ahmed Mourad in The Originals, which continued with the film Diamond Dust that was released in 2018, followed by Blue Elephant: Dark Whispers, which became the highest-grossing film in the history of Egyptian cinema. For his work in The Originals, Al Morsy won five awards, including three awards from the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS). Al Morsy recently wrapped up shooting director Ahmad Alaa Aldeeb's film Al Aref: Awdet Younis and is currently shooting Marwan Hamed's Kira & El Gin. In 1998, Al Morsy graduated from the Higher Institute of Cinema, and then he traveled to the USA to complete further filming studies in different cinematography schools attending classes of Feature Film Lighting, DP Master Class and Advanced Cinematography. Al Morsy worked as a Steadicam Operator on 40 films. In 1999, he participated as a 1st Assistant Camera (1st AC) in El Medina (The City) by Yousry Nasrallah, which holds the record for Egypt's first film shot by a digital camera. As a Cameraman, his repertoire includes other gems from the Egyptian cinema archives, such as Youssef Chahine's Alexandria ... New York (2004), Mohamed Yassine's The Gazelle's Blood (2005), and the highest production budget film in Egyptian cinema history, The Yacoubian Building (2006). In 2019, Al Morsy took part in the Discovery Channel's two-hour special episode Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live, which featured the opening of an Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus live from an archeological site in Minya governorate. Al Morsy was a jury member of the Arab Cinema Horizons Competition held within the 2017 Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) and the Made In Egypt competition at the Shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival in the same year. Moreover, he conducts a number of lectures and writes several articles about the art of cinematography. In 2020, Al Morsy joined the judging panel of the newly curated RFF-Revart Film Festival. Hailed as Egypt's first online vertical festival, RFF aims to introduce a modern dimension of creativity to filmmakers during the COVID-19 crisis. He was also a member in the selection committee of Medfest Egypt. As for TV commercials, Al Morsy became one of the most important cameramen in the Arab world due to his passion for experimenting with new tools in more than 2000 ads in Egypt, UAE, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, U.K., France and Spain. Al Morsy's outstanding talent in cinematography made ARRI select his projects for the Union National Bank as the main ad for its showreel presentation at IBC Expo 2015 that featured videos that have been filmed using ALEXA cameras in 2015 and in 2016 within The Looks of ALEXA video that features Al Morsy's Ministry of Electricity TV commercial; Enta El Hall, in addition to his ad for L'azurde. ARRI also featured his work in Al Aslyeen film, Vodafone's '4G Geel Beykamel Geel' (A Generation Leads Another) commercial campaign, Pharco's commercial, and superstar Angham's music video 'Ann Farh Ghayeb' in its camera showreel in 2017. His Indigo Plus TV commercial for WE, the Egyptian mobile service provider, was included in ARRI's camera showreel in 2019. Five of Al Morsy's TV commercials received awards at the 10th Dubai Lynx International Festival of Creativity in 2016, which celebrates the region's creativity in the communications industry. Al Morsy also filmed many music videos for major artists in the Arab world, such as Tamer Hosni, Samira Said, Mohamed Mounir, Angham and Sami Yusuf.
