Variety Arabia talks to Mohamed Karim about Tarot and his movie career

Award-winning Egyptian actor Mohamed Karim talked to Variety Arabia about his movie career, hosting The Voice, and shared his thoughts about Tarot.

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Egyptian star Mohamed Karim has been extremely busy, having just finished shooting his lead role in the international movie “Facebook Romance” by American-Jordanian director, Mohy Quandour (“Cherkess”).


The award-winning actor is also working on another British horror/ fantasy, “Tarot”, directed by Nick Von Schlippe. The film, inspired by the tarot reading experience of producer and screenwriter Zuzana Jochman, tells the story of how three city girls’ attempt to help their grieving friend by taking her on a weekend trip, but manage to trigger a witch's deadly spell by playing with an ancient Tarot deck.

With this film, Karim hopes to achieve international success, by emphasising the fact that he doesn’t play the role of an Egyptian or an Arab in the film. “I am so happy with my participation in this film,” Karim tells Variety Arabia. “The most interesting part is that I was cast because of my acting skills, as I play the role of a normal Western guy.”

He adds, “I love to challenge myself. I want to do films that really don’t stereotype, something not part of the circle we [Arabs] got into somehow. I don’t want to put myself in one category.” Karim notes that he has received criticism in the past for not doing so many films and series, but he prefers to do one movie that will achieve huge success at the festivals and box office, rather than four and five films that will go unnoticed.

“I like to build a bridge between me and the audience, that when they see my name on the screen they know they can trust it. It does cost me a lot, but this what I love to do and be,” he adds.

Karim, who was born and raised in Cairo, is a doctor by profession. He finished his degree in medicine at Ain Shams University, but would travel to LA during the summer vacations to follow American cinema and various acting courses.

Karim is best known for starring in director Khaled Youssef’s 2009 film “Dokkan Shehata” (Shehata’s Shop), which was shown at several festivals around the Arab world and Europe, as well as at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. He also acted in a number of Egyptian series before landing his first American role in the 2010 feature film “Freedom”.

Besides acting in a number of successful Arab drama series, Karim has recently started working as a presenter, becoming the host of the Arabic version of the popular singing competition “The Voice”, which airs on MBC1.

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