The Arab film festival landscape has changed significantly compared to five years ago, when Dubai was queen following the demise of Abu Dhabi, and everyone else sort of paid obeisance. It wasn’t that Dubai’s programing was always the best – sometimes on the contrary – but it was a well-oiled machine that guaranteed easy access to films and colleagues in the industry, all in convenient, user-friendly (and ultra-glamorous) spaces. The Cairo International Film Festival, by contrast, was the grand, musty old lady, perpetually touting its position as the only A-list festival in the region. The truth was it had become tired years earlier, pushed into the corner by the bling of the Emirati events and its own complacent executive committee. People still wanted to come to Cairo because it was Cairo, and there was always the hope of catching some good Egyptian films, but the selection too often felt third-rate and younger audiences tended to stay away.
Then in 2018, producer/scriptwriter Mohamed Hefzy was appointed president, and things began to change fast. Screening conditions improved dramatically, and the festival hub had an energy unseen for decades. The programming of European films began to approach the quality of Zawya Cinema’s superb Panorama of European Film, usually just a week or two before Cairo, and the Arab premieres were considerably better than before. This year’s 43rd edition continued that trend, boasting a strong line-up, crowded cinemas, and a vibrant industry section called the Cairo Film Connection. Putting up all the guests in the central Marriott hotel in Zamalek facilitated access to people, and getting to the venues on festival transport was a breeze.
Cairo wisely never tried to reinvent itself as the successor to Dubai, nor does it aim for the swank appeal of El Gouna, which is just over one month earlier. Its red carpet is a relatively muted affair, more about filmmakers than stars, and for that alone the festival distinguishes itself from its neighbors. It’s also an extremely press-friendly event, thanks in no small degree to the work of Brigitta Portier, whose excellent rapport with the festival managers meant that information, from press kits to PCR testing, was always readily accessible. The catalog, though, needs a total redesign, hopefully one that will include an index to the films.
International competition consisted of strong titles that first played elsewhere, such as 107 Mothers, Softie and A Chiara, as well as a few world premieres, including new films by Egypt’s Nadine Khan, Tunisia’s Dhafer L’Abidine and Jordan’s Zaid Abu Hamdan. The Horizons of Arab Cinema competition section was also a mix, containing enough premieres to keep industry and the public happy and engaged. Among some of the standout titles deserving mention, No Land’s Man (in the Special Screenings section) again shows leading Bangladeshi director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki shooting off in a new direction, this time bridging a light-hearted rom com with the dark undertones of white supremacy and racism. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance is this tragicomedy has an effortless cool that holds the story together.
Among the standout Arab films were impressive works by several first-time directors. A new Lebanese talent who jumped out of obscurity with a film notable for its depth and sensitivity, George Peter Barbari impressed with his story of four young men setting out to visit a prostitute in Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living. Another memorable discovery was the Tunisian film Tomorrow (Ghodwa), written and directed by popular actor Dhafer L’Abidine. Its drama about a mentally ill human rights lawyer courageously recalls the victims of Tunisia’s 2010/11 revolution who are still without government compensation for rape, torture and death at the hands of the authorities. Ameer Fakher Eldin’s The Stranger movingly captures the existential and physical limbo of life in the occupied Golan Heights and boasts exquisite cinematography.
The Film Verdict has been forced to devote considerable space to the way individual festivals have dealt with health and safety concerns during the pandemic, and in this regard the Cairo festival was one of the most lax and laid-back about the rules that we have seen. The ticketing approach was low-tech, and hard copies of film tickets were easy to obtain in the hotel. But the throngs of young people pushing their way into the inner grounds of the Opera House, where most of the screenings were held, were really an alarming sight to Western eyes, with masking being as optional as social distancing. Rather pathetically, the only health warning sounded from a recorded message loop playing quietly at the box office window in English: “Wear your mask. Wear your mask…” Although the Egyptian government has been releasing reassuringly low Covid figures, word of mouth with locals told a very different story, and it was hard to blame jury president Emir Kusturica and several other jurors who chose to scurry home over Covid-related concerns and were absent from the awards ceremony.
Mohamad Hefzy’s talented art directors staged a fast-paced closing ceremony as entertaining as it was rare. The venue was the city’s dazzling Cairo Opera House, where guests in evening clothes and no masks were packed into a crowded parterre and stacked vertically on four rising balconies. This elegant crowd responded enthusiastically not only to the many Egyptians prize winners and Golden Pyramid honorees who made a quick bow onstage, but to American producer Lawrence Bender and Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux, and even to a mention of the South Korean Academy Award winner Parasite, showing they were dedicated cinephiles at heart who had turned out not just to be seen in their finery, but to support a major cultural event for Egypt that has matured and modernized over time.
