Being the son of the famous Egyptian film director Saad Arafa, Sherif Arafa's involve¬ment in the film industry started in his teenage years. After going to University to study Commerce, he dropped out after one year to follow his passion of studying directing at the National Institute for Cinema. His directorial debut came at the young age of 25 with the film, "The Dwarves are Coming". Since then, Sherif has directed 18 feature films and 2 theatrical plays, in addition to other film and TV projects. During his career, Sherif Arafa has become recognized as one of the top film directors in Egypt, gathering many awards over the years both locally and in Europe, such as Silver Award at the Milan Film Festival in 1992 for "Terrorism and Kebab" and in 1995 for "Birds of Darkness" and Bronze at Valencia Film festival for the same film in 1995. These are in addition to the numerous awards locally from the Egyptian Film Associa-tion and the Catholic Egyptian Cinema Center. His latest films include "Halim" (2006) the biography of the famous Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez, the well acclaimed "El Gezira" (2007) and the box-office controversial hit "Cousins" (2009).

Source: www.18days-movie.com/