We’ve been anticipating Rami Malek’s Oscar win for weeks, but things took quite a positive turn after reading about another Egyptian celebrating a different Academy Award victory.
Visual effects artist, Ahmed Walid, took to social media last week to announce that he was part of the team that delivered Best Animated Feature Film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Walid added a screenshot of a long-awaited IMDB page and he thanked Walt Disney Studios and his team.
As expected, a media frenzy followed Walid’s viral post, simply because these are the kind of inspiring stories we all need in our lives. At that time the artist was already intervewed by a fellow magazine and I had no reason to doubt him.
The IMDB page was ‘STILL’ there, he gave a solid detailed inerview, he had another Facebook post with an attached Oscar ceremony invite from 2017, his name wouldn’t necessarily be part of the movie’s on-screen credits so we couldn’t rely on it, and we ended up reporting the story.
Hours later, Ahmed Walid found himself suffering from social media’s wrath and was accused of being an imposter. The comments were everything between calling him a fake as the IMDB page disappeared, wondering why thank Walt Disney when it’s produced by a different company and rejecting the idea of calling him an Oscar winner just because he was part of the team that won.
To end the ongoing debate and put all doubt to rest, I reached out to him for a full statement. Walid claimed that his IMDB page is currently being verified and the filmography list will appear soon.
The visual effects coordinator added that he never said he personally won an Oscar, but merely celebrated an Oscar-winning movie that he worked on for six months. He has been relentlessly explaining so in the comments section but people continued to doubt him.
Commenters also found it unexplainable that Walid would thank Walt Disney Studios when Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie is a Sony Imageworks production.
His justification was never claiming to be part of Sony Imageworks’ team, however at that time he was employed for six months at Germany’s Cinesite Studios, a company that allegedly partcipated in the movie, and it was Disney that introduced him to them.
An insider at Sony Imageworks sent us the list of credits posted by the company itself after the big win. The Egyptian artist’s name was missing, but then again he did say he only worked as a visual effects coordinator on the movie for six months through another company. Maybe that wasn’t enough to get him accredited, even though it was the full crew list!
Our insider also added that Cinesite Studios’s branch in Germany is a company called Trixter, which led to another disturbing fact that the movie was solely produced between Vancouver and Los Angeles. That in addition to not finding any correlation between the studios and the Oscar-winning movie after checking both Cinesite Studio and Trixter filmography lists.
Ahmed Walid however has been extremely cooperative and sincere with our team, and agreed to verify his claims through Cinesite Studios team. The artist explained that he never asked for this kind of media attention and it was getting out of proportion.
Whatever is going on here, I sincerely hope this isn’t another Nasa Girl hoax. We were truly ecstatic for a young student/employee to be involved in major productions and if it’s all a scam then my trust issues will be beyond repair.
