Partizan has announced the signing of Egyptian photographer and director Hussein Mardini.

With a background in stills and a practice that has grown outward into moving image, Mardini brings a photographer's discipline to filmmaking, with a strong visual craft and a clear sense of how an idea holds together across a sequence.

His work moves between high-profile brand campaigns, music projects and self-initiated documentaries, unified less by subject than by approach. Hussein’s films are characterised by patience with a subject and precision in the frame; an eye trained on stills, applied to motion. His music work includes the video for Wazira by Palestinian singer Saint Levant.

He has collaborated with GQ, Nowness and Afroto. His films balance atmosphere and clarity, delivering work that feels contemporary while remaining grounded in the core idea. For the short dance film Ballet du Caire, Hussein frames sha3by from a new angle, slowed down and scored to mimic classical tradition. Questioning artistic hierarchies and the Western pedestal that positions ballet as art and homegrown dance forms as low, Mardini observes a landscape that decides which movement is elevated and which is dismissed, observing the body-work of sha3by as an art form in its own right, and the ballet of a new era. 

Community sits at the centre of his thinking. He documents the places and people that genuinely interest him, and shoots from close range rather than at a distance, a proximity that carries into his commercial work, where people register as people rather than set dressing. His film "El Leila El Kebeera" captures the joyous Moulids celebrated across Egypt.

“I grew up in Cairo, I watched my generation invent an art form with its own instincts, learned from each other in rooms with no institutional blessing," says Mardini. "This film is a refusal of the local complex that looks at its own streets as something to be ashamed of, while bowing to a tradition it was taught to call classical.”

Danny Herman, EP at Partizan, adds: "What stood out immediately was Hussein’s ability to bring a photographer’s precision to moving image without losing any warmth. He shoots communities from within, with a strong focus on his Arab heritage, and that sense of trust translates directly into the work. It’s a rare quality, and one that makes him a very natural fit for Partizan."

• Watch Hussein Mardini's showreel at Partizan here