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THE man at the centre of a Brisbane airport and Surfers Paradise lockdown was an award-winning cinematographer who fled his homeland at the height of the Arab Spring, the Bulletin can reveal.
Egyptian native Gamal Elboushi came to the Gold Coast in 2011 with a young family on a distinguished talent visa. People close to him say he was a gifted cinematographer, “the best in the Middle East”. Elboushi’s airport bomb hoax also prompted police to shut down Surfers Paradise on a busy Saturday night in February, 2019, as bomb squad officers combed Bruce Bishop Car Park.
His sentencing to six years’ jail on Tuesday is a huge fall from grace. Film and commercial industry insiders, who asked not to be named, say he is an award-winning cinematographer, who had been the go-to man for big multi-national firms wanting to film ads for a Middle Eastern audience.
They said he liked to recount how he left his native country, living in an affluent area in Egypt that became a hotbed for looting as the uprising in the country took off. On arriving in Australia, Elboushi planned to continue working as a cinematographer in the heart of the Gold Coast film and advertising industry. Before that, Elboushi led a charmed life, filming advertisements for large fast food, car, soft drink and banking companies, winning numerous international awards for cinematography. “He was the premier cinematographer in the Middle East, he has won multiple international awards, extremely gifted,” one insider said. “In that world, of highend advertising, we’re talking the big fast-food companies, the cars, the credit cards. He is the guy who would go and do that. He was a serious player. “He was the No.1 cinematographer in the Middle East to shoot those high-end TV ads. He was the one.” Those close to him told the Bulletin Elboushi expected to walk into a job in the industry on the Coast.
“He had come to Australia to start a new life with his family and to try his luck here as a cinematographer. “Given his track record in Egypt, he could expect to do very well. Unfortunately, when he arrived there was a downturn in the industry and he found he wasn’t getting the opportunities he thought he would.
“It wasn’t what he thought it was going to be. “There’s no doubting his track record, he is incredibly talented, he was the absolute leader in his field.” Elboushi even spent time with the cinematographer behind the award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, Anthony Dod Mantle, showing him around the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.
In the past five years, Elboushi went back to Egypt to work on a film called Hepta: The Last Lecture, which was played at festivals across the globe and is considered one of the best Egyptian films made, with a star-studded Middle Eastern cast.
“It was an outstanding piece of cinema,” another said. “It looks like it has gone fairly wide, in terms of Middle Eastern cinema.
“What an absolutely crazy life this man has led.” Elboushi lived on the Surfers Plaza Resort 11th floor. Australian Federal Police raided his unit after the incident.