Egyptian-Austrian filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky (Yomeddine, Hajjan) is back. After debuting movies at Cannes and Toronto, he world premiered his latest, The Stories, at the29th editionof the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival(PFF) in Estonia on Sunday.

Given the reputation he has developed with his past works, including 2018s Yomeddine being Egypts international Oscar submission, the writer-directors new movie drew a big crowd, which used every second of a QA following the premiere screening to hear more about how The Stories came to be. Shawky and his creative team cinematically imagine the story of his parents his father grew up in Egypt, his mother in Austria and stories of their families, friends and acquaintances, starting with how the mother and father came into contact as international pen pals.

The Stories tells five stories, leaving time gaps in between, that mix archival footage of political speeches, soccer matches, film clips and radio transmissions with acted scenes. The film also provides a musical kaleidoscopes of Egyptian songs from 1967 to 1984, along with classical music.

Egypt. Summer 1967. Ahmed receives a letter from Austria Liz has replied to his search for a pen pal, reads a synopsis for The Stories. They begin a long-distance friendship that is viewed with suspicion by his relatives. From this summer onwards, Ahmeds efforts to become a pianist despite his humble social background will gain unstoppable momentum, as Liz pushes him towards his elusive goal: a public concert. Together, with this shared dream always in mind, Ahmed and Liz will live through war, family joys, opposition and dramas, failures and triumphs that rocked Egypt until the 1980s.

Written and directed by Shawky, the film has a cast led by Amir El-Masry (The Crown, Industry, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) and Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,Egon Schiele:Death and the Maiden,A Hidden Life). Nelly Karim, Ahmed Kamal, and Khaled Mokhtar also feature.

Produced by Julie Viez, The Stories was edited by Roland Stttinger, with Wolfgang Thaler handling the cinematography. Goodfellas is handling sales.

This film is based on the true story of how my parents got together in the 70s, and my parents are here today, Shawky said to much applause, welcoming his parents on stage. Its about worlds colliding. Its about worlds meeting. Its about little victories in life, and little people trying to do big things.

The Stories Courtesy of PFF During a QA, the filmmaker shared that his family is full of great storytellers, andwhenever they tell the same story, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, and it becomes more fantastical and much more removed from what actually happened. And I thought, itd be a good thing to make a movie about that, because most of whats happening is fiction, but its based on reality, which is how my parents got together when they were writing letters to each other in the 70s. And all these stories that I would hear over and over and over again, in my mind, they become much more fantastical.

Concluded Shawky: Actually, maybe, in reality, they were much more normal, but this is how I imagined them.

Pachner shared that I just learned a few lines in Arabic for the movie. Unfortunately, I forgot them all.

El-Masry recalled: I had about two months to learn to play Bach and Rachmaninoff and an amazing teacher. There was a lot that I had to learn about positioning and stuff, but the magic of cinema did the rest.

Shawkys parents have a cameo in The Stories. But their son didnt tell them the full extent that their families life would be brought to the screen, his mother shared during the Tallinn QA to much laughter from the audience. He said its [snippets] about us, but its a lot about us, she said.

And she ended on a celebratory note: Each and every character that is in the film, all of these persons, I spent many, many years with in Egypt before we even got married. All these characters, really lived. Most of them have passed away now. And [my son] made a monument to all these very simple people who were always on the losing side of life, but now, actually, theres a film about them. Thank you for this.