Cairo Film Festival in its 45th session: Celebrating Palestine

From the heart of the Egyptian capital, the 45th session of the Cairo International Film Festival was launched, after the cancellation of last year’s session, which was supposed to take place this month, but Israel’s crimes in the Gaza Strip at the time prevented that. While the department is still suffering from two issues; The festival management had no choice but to launch its current session, as the 2012 session was previously canceled for security reasons due to the January Uprising, which threatens the festival in -year by leaving the international class, which is unique in being the only festival in the Arab and African region that is registered with the International Federation of Producers – FIPRES – in Brussels,” which was said by the president of the festival, the artist Hussein Fahmy, at a press conference in the new session.

From here, it will be clear to us how the festival had to complete its journey without forgetting the full solidarity of the Palestinian people, which was represented in many forms, the most important of which is people – banning bail from boycott companies and replacing them. local brands. This was indeed shown during the days of the events and at the opening ceremony, in which a large number of stars and artists were dressed in the Palestinian shawl, while the administration distributed a three-dimensional pin of the map of Palestine to the attendants. In the same context, the opening program began with a dance performance of folk dances by the band “Watan Arts” to the tune of the song: “I pledge my faith… My blood is Palestinian.” The film “Fleeting Dreams” by the director Rashid Masharawi was chosen to open the session of the year.

This year’s program includes 194 films (twice the number of films in the previous session), and the makers gather, participate or compete from more than seventy Arab countries. and foreign, in world premieres, local and international, or at the level of the Middle East region, in which more than a hundred films will be shown. In addition, the program is full of a large number of parallel events and activities, not to mention the creation of some sections and awards such as the “Future Generation” award within the “Cairo Film Industry Days” activity, which aims to support. projects of young filmmakers. The screening program also extends from the area of ​​the Opera House and the surroundings of the city center to the “6th of October and Settlement” neighborhoods, in additional collaboration with the “Fox” Cinema group, gives the total number of screens. to (11).

At the level of honor, the new session did not differ from what followed in the recent sessions, whether in terms of number or quota (three names, two of them from Egypt, one of them from the youth), as the ” Faten Hamama Award for Excellence” went to the actor Ahmed Ezz, and the renowned director Yousry Nasrallah won the Golden Pyramid Lifetime Achievement Award. As for the foreign honor, this year it went to director Danis Tanovic from Bosnia. In this context, the festival released, among its publications, two books about the two honorable names from Egypt, while leaving out a similar book about the documentary director, and in an important step in terms of documents, the third edition of the session comes, which is a selection of materials published in the magazine “Seventh Art”, which became widely known in the early nineties.

The magazine was published in 1997 with self-financing from the actor Mahmoud Hemida, who continued to write the editorial for every issue, until he stopped due to funding in August (2001). of acclaimed cinematic compositions by writers from Egypt and abroad. Participation was not limited to critics and researchers only, but also attracted several filmmakers to write. The book is about 250 pages long, prepared and presented by the film critic Dr. Naji Fawzi, who says in his introduction: “It may be very sad that the Seventh Art Magazine stopped after the fortieth issue But, it is important to remember that these issues, in are treasures of knowledge, at the forefront of the clear commitment to present a kind of high-level cinematic culture.

It’s a unique session that sees many cinematic collaboration ventures, and their differences emerge from the first moments of the red carpet event in terms of organization and otherwise, through program activities and film programming, whether in the competitive sections or parallel programs, which appreciate the effective contribution of the new artistic director, the critic Issam Zakaria, the former president for the Ismailia Recording Festival. The activities of the new session will continue until today (22nd of this month), when the awards will be announced, and it is expected that the Palestinian side will have a share of them.

Palestine is present

The participation of Palestinian cinema this year was not limited to the opening film, there was almost no programming section without the presence of Palestinian cinema or the issue in general. Starting with the “Arab Cinema Competition,” which features 14 films, including six documentaries, three of which are from Palestine: “The Beloved State of Gaza overlooks the sea. In the first film by directors Carole Mansour and Mona Khalidi, we follow the journey of the British surgeon of Palestinian origin, Ghassan Abu Sitta, who was nicknamed the war doctor, and in the second film, the director Mahmoud Nabil observes the daily suffering of four people. men inside the Gaza Strip. The same applies to director Maxime Lindon’s third film, which revolves around “Shadi”. A Palestinian with French citizenship decides to spend the holidays in his city and encounters many obstacles and restrictions on his journey.

In the short film competition, the young Palestinian director Annie Skab participates in an experimental documentary film called “We Sang a Poem,” in which she discusses the different images of the meaning of love. through the interplay of light and shadow in a language that. not without poetry. On the other hand, Moatasem Taha presents his special film, no longer than nine minutes, entitled “A Boring Poetic Life,” which depicts a son’s attempt to help his elderly father regain his memory back through the old homes he lived in. In a similar context, the idea of ​​the film “Songs” by the Jordanian director Mai Al-Ghouti revolves around where we follow the suffering of Maryam with Alzheimer’s disease, which destroyed her memory, but was not he can erase an old memory that she had lived before, when she used to sing Palestinian songs to bring water to everyone.

As for the opening film, its director, Rashid Masharawi, excelled in drawing an attractive and humane world in which he highlighted the visual image to record vivid and fresh scenes of ancient Palestinian cities such as Haifa, through a simple but very delicate plot with the signs and symbols it carries, as we follow the strange journey of the boy Sami in He follows the search for a pigeon that was given to him recently, so he still being trained to be a link between them and his father, who is serving a sentence in prisons. The post banned him from visiting. On his journey, the child goes with his uncle from one town to another in search of the pigeon, which became the only pigeon, the link.
It should be noted that Rashid Masharawi was born in the Al-Shati camp in the Gaza Strip. Last May, he launched a project called “Films from Distance Zero,” which resulted in 22 short films filmed from inside Gaza, to which this year’s festival will be a ‘ provide a separate section within the special program offers.

Rashid Masharawi with his team during the festival (Getty, 11/13/2024)

Spotlight on Palestinian cinema

The Masharawi project is launched with the support of a fund established by the Co-Origin Foundation, which works on artistic promotion and cultural exchange between civilizations. Most of its resources vary in terms of subscriptions and donations. , as well as some supporting partnerships with various institutions. The makers of these films worked under difficult conditions that dominate all aspects of life in the region. Perhaps that is why the length of the film was between 3 and 6 minutes, and it varied between documentary films, documentary and experimental, as well as animated. movies.

Another program entitled “Spotlights on Palestinian Cinema”, in which we follow three short films, the first one directed by Louay Awad, who takes the hero of his film “Born Famous” on a psychological journey to freedom find and the fertility he needs in his small town. From the Northwest Bank, director Qassam Sobeih traces the stories of the people of the Palestinian town of Jenin in his documentary film “Dreams of a Square Kilometer,” paving the way for examples from different generations that tell how which they suffered under the occupation.

Last but not least is the film “Tooth of the Gazelle” by the young director Saif Hammash, a Palestinian film student from Deisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. During the short duration of the film, which does not exceed a quarter of an hour, Hammash was able to create a unique world that combines sensitivity and humanity despite the dark circumstances by using a simple incident of a young man from a refugee camp. He embarked on a dangerous journey to fulfill his younger brother’s wish, when he lost a tooth and wanted to throw it into the sea towards the sun, to make sure it would grow again.