Looking for VFX & post-production? That part of Aroma Studios is now AO3 Studios
Filming in Egypt: how it works, what it costs, and how to get permits.
Everything an international producer needs to know before shooting in Egypt — written by a production company that shoots here year-round.
How to film in Egypt
International productions film in Egypt through a licensed local production services partner, who sponsors the shoot, secures government filming permits, clears locations and equipment through customs, and provides the local crew. With an experienced partner handling the paperwork in parallel, most productions can be shoot-ready in a few weeks — including access to sites you would assume are off-limits. Aroma Studios has taken cameras inside historic mosques, government-controlled zones and desert military areas, because we begin the clearance work on day one.
Filming permits in Egypt
Permits are issued per location and per activity: city streets, antiquities sites (the Pyramids, Luxor, Islamic Cairo), aerial and drone work, and coastal or desert zones each follow their own approval path. The practical answer for a foreign production: your Egyptian partner files, follows and personally walks every permit through — and schedules the shoot around realistic approval timelines, not optimistic ones. This is the single area where local relationships save productions the most time.
Cost of filming in Egypt
Egypt is one of the most cost-competitive production hubs in the region. Full local crews, equipment, stages, transport and locations typically come in well below European rates and compare favorably with Morocco, Jordan and South Africa — while offering looks (Pyramids, Nile, Red Sea, medieval Cairo, European-style downtown) that other hubs simply do not have. Send us your script or treatment and we return a transparent budget framework: crew day-rates, equipment packages, location fees, permits and logistics, line by line.
Life between shooting days
Cairo is one of the great living cities — world-class restaurants, the new Grand Egyptian Museum beside the Pyramids, Nile-side hotels, and nightlife that runs as late as your call sheet allows. It is a safe, welcoming, endlessly interesting base for a visiting crew: your cast will never be bored on a day off. Red Sea resorts are under an hour's flight away for weekend turnarounds.
What Aroma Studios provides
Line production and budgeting · filming permits and clearances · location scouting and management · full Egyptian crews (bilingual HODs and technicians) · fixers and translators · camera, grip and lighting rental · stages and backlots · casting and background · transport, generators and accommodation · post & VFX via AO3 Studios. One partner, one point of accountability, from prep to wrap. See it proven at scale in our High Value Target case study.
“I built Aroma Studios on a simple belief: Egypt is one of the greatest places on earth to make film and television — five thousand years of locations within thirty minutes of Cairo, and crews whose craft matches any market I’ve worked in. Today we operate between Cairo, Dubai and Riyadh, producing our own slate and putting that same machine — permits, locations, crews, stages, logistics — at the service of international productions. When a producer lands in Egypt with us, they get one accountable partner who treats their picture like our own. That’s the standard, on every shoot.”
Tamer Mortada — Founder, Aroma Studios
Planning a shoot in Egypt?
Tell us about your project — we'll come back with a service breakdown and budget framework within days.