Menna Shalaby is the first Egyptian and Arab actress to be nominated for an American Emmy Award

The series “Every Week on Friday”, broadcast on a digital platform, tells the story of a girl who became a serial killer after marrying a man with mental health problems.

The American Emmy Awards were established over 70 years ago by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and are dedicated to television work from series and programs.

The results of this year’s Emmy Awards will be announced on Nov. 22 at a ceremony in upstate New York.

As soon as news of Menna Shalaby’s nomination for the Emmy broke, many actors, directors and audiences began to congratulate Shalaby on his nomination for the award via social media platforms.

Art critic Tariq El-Shennawy considers Menna Shalaby to be one of the most important stars in Arab cinema, especially over the past decade.

Al-Shennawi explained to the BBC that “Shalaby is able to choose the best texts to represent them, and she is able to color, and is convincing in comedy and tragedy, and is adept at speaking and expressing with her eyes. . “

Menna Shalaby has presented dozens of works of art for film and television, including “The Sweetest Times”, “Downtown Girls”, “The Morning and Evening Talk” and “Why La: Part Two”.

Menna Shalaby has also received a number of awards, the most recent of which is the Faten Hamama Award at the Cairo International Film Festival in 2019 for her overall work.

The series “Every Week on a Friday”, for which Shalaby was nominated for an Emmy Award, was not very popular when it first aired, as it was shown on a non-free digital platform in the one of its new services. .

Art critic Mohamed Abdel Rahman points out that the writing and directing elements of the series were stimulated by creativity, attractiveness and honesty, in addition to the strength of the performance of actor and of great financial support.

Abdel Rahman adds to the BBC that Arabic works are not frequently nominated for these awards because they lack high quality picture and sound, as well as strong texts, especially those taken from literary novels, as is the case. case with this series.

The series “Every week on Friday” is based on a novel by Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abdel Meguid. This is happening despite the decline in addiction to novels in film and television stories in recent years, unlike what was common in Egypt in the middle of the last century.

Abdel Meguid believes that the problem is that “writing for Arabic works is subject to severe censorship, in addition to the fact that most television platforms in Egypt have become monopolized”.

With a company in Egypt capable of producing most film and television works through its ownership of most television platforms, the number of works produced each year has fallen to less than half.

In an interview with the BBC, the Egyptian novelist calls for more works of art to be shown that deal with diverse opinions on political, social and intellectual issues.