Walking through a fantasy courtyard of moving balls of light and walls lined with life-size faux-Egyptian statues of a woman holding a pyramid over her head, visitors to the 44th Cairo International Film Festival got a pretty good first impression of this glamorous and tastefully updated festival, the oldest and most respected in the Arab world.
With the return of Hussein Fahmy, one of the Middle East’s most famous and beloved stars, as president this year, along with new artistic director Amir Ramses as head of programming, the festival got a reset that often felt more like of a tweak. There was certainly a feeling that Cairo was continuing the modernization process begun by former festival head Mohamed Hefzy, getting rid of the exclusivity and élite guests in the front row and making way for many more enthusiastic festival-goers who came to watch the movies.
Just like the phenomenon TFV noted at other summer and fall festivals from Karlovy Vary to IDFA, the end of the pandemic in Egypt has seen a frantic return to group gatherings and events, much to the benefit of the festival box office. Screenings throughout the day were close to full at the four venues of the Cairo Opera House and at a couple of additional theaters down the road in the upscale area of Zamalek. When the festival got underway, the city’s insanely heavy traffic spread even to these leafy streets lined with embassies, making physical attendance something of a miracle. One can understand why Hussein Fahmy is pushing to expand the festival throughout Cairo’s far-flung neighborhoods, which would allow many more local residents to access its program, and why next year may see the festival explode in terms of attendance.
In terms of programming, the diversity and strength of the non-Arab line-up was notable in reflecting Amir Ramses’ refined taste for art house cinema. Hungarian master Béla Tarr was an esoteric choice for a master class (it was sold out immediately, however) as was Japanese director Naomi Kawase as president of the main jury, sending a signal that the festival is veering into a cineaste space.
But as far as offerings from the Middle East films went, it was pretty much an average year. Many people expected the cancelation of the other important film festival in Egypt, El Gouna, to translate into a greater pool of top-notch Arab films at Cairo, but this turned out not to be the case. The impact of the Red Sea Film Festival – coming up in December — on Cairo’s ability to have MENA-region premieres is difficult to quantify now, but it will be interesting to give this further thought in 2023.
With increasingly onerous, sometimes arbitrary censorship regulations affecting all productions as well as festivals, the Egyptian film industry is in a particularly difficult moment – even major directors are being refused permission for their often innocuous scripts. It’s not only stories or particular scenes deemed insufficiently patriotic or remotely critical of the power structure, but anything seen as going counter to “traditional family values” is being censored, meaning that many of the great films from the country’s Golden Age in the 1950s and ‘60s would never be able to be made now. The chilling effect is already being felt within the industry and there’s legitimate concern that the pool of quality independent Egyptian productions will diminish further, which could be bad news for the Cairo festival (and the country as a whole). Thankfully, there were no apparent signs of censorship on the festival’s selection itself, which included contemporary themes and characters like the trans women in Joyland and Something You Said Last Night, to the potentially controversial doc on Sufism in Egypt, Light Upon Light.
Cairo’s Arab films were an eclectic lot, and it is hard to find common concerns or connecting themes. Which is not to say that the Mideast selection was without highlights, and an Arab film even won the festival’s top prize, the Golden Pyramid, in the main international competition. Alam (literally, the flag) is a coproduction between France, Tunisia and Palestine with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose first-feature director Firas Khoury captured teenage life in a middle-class high school in Israel in a fresh new voice. The film also reached viewers, winning the Audience Award, while young talent Mahmoud Bakry won the best actor nod (shared with Maher El Khair, the Sudanese actor in The Dam) in the international competition.
The other Arab stand-out this year was the Egyptian film 19B, a finely crafted social drama about the class structure of Egyptian society and the elderly guardian of an empty building who is about to be made redundant. Directed by the well-known Ahmad Abdalla and produced by former Cairo topper Mohamed Hefzy, it took home several big awards, including Best Arab Film and the Fipresci award, as well as a prize to cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef.
Winner of the Horizon of Arab cinema was Carlos Chahine’s Mother Valley, which took a swipe at arranged marriages in Lebanon. Set in a Christian village in the 1950s, it describes how a young wife and mother falls for a Frenchman, much to her family’s chagrin. The other big awards winner screening in Horizons was Riverbed. This small mood piece about the strained relations between a mother and her grown daughter by Lebanese director Bassem Breche that came out of left field to win the second prize in Horizons, as well as a well-merited acting award for star Carole Abboud and a special mention for the Best Arab Film Award, just behind the winner 19B.
From a journalist’s point of view, a grateful tip of the hat is owing to Brigitta Portier and her team for their superb job in making our work flow smoothly, and to the warm welcome from the festival management. –Deborah Young and Jay Weissberg
