‘Cinema for Humanity’ has been the slogan of the El Gouna Film Festival since its inception six years ago on the shores of Egypt’s Red Sea, and never has it been so apt a catch-phrase as at this year’s festival. Taking place from December 14 to 21, awkwardly sandwiched between the Red Sea Film Festival and Christmas after being postponed twice, the festival was somewhat reduced in size but nevertheless a moral triumph for its organizers and a unique example (at least so far) of how a large-scale Middle East event can adapt itself to armed conflict just beyond its border.
Unquestionably, Palestine took center stage this year. Those attending the festival and its many events never shied away from addressing the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians. But there were no protests or diplomatic incidents as have occurred in Europe.
Dimming the lights on the usual colorful red carpet, opening and closing ceremonies had a sober tone and guests followed a less flashy black, white and silver dress code. At the opening, veteran Egyptian actor Mahmoud Hemida addressed the audience with the words, “I am now supposed to ask you for a moment of silence, but I will not. Because mourning, as we express sadness, is an excuse for forgetting, and I do not want to forget, nor do I want you to forget.”
Instead of flamboyant TV-friendly entertainments, singers like Chilean star Elyanna and the popular Egyptian band Cairokee invoked the Palestinian experience in plaintive numbers. On the unconventional side, the festival chose to honor two veteran clapper loaders, Khairy Farag and Mohamed Al-Kilany, who have worked in Egyptian films since the 1970s. More conventional honorees included Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, who received a Career Achievement Award, and French actor Christopher Lambert.
Playing to a smaller crowd of press, professionals and audiences than in previous years, the festival unfolded with dignity, without lavish festivities, and with a few new parts. Under the management of festival director Intishal Al-Timimi and first-time artistic director Marianne Khoury, there was a beefed-up industry focus which found an elegant open-air home at the Plaza, El Gouna’s most famous piece of modern architecture. Falling under the umbrella of CineGouna were the project market CineGouna SpringBoard; an array of local, regional and international professionals connecting at CineGouna Bridge; plus the launch of CineGouna Market to showcase film line-ups, projects and services and CineGouna Emerge to offer support to students and debuting filmmakers.
Screenings were a mixed bag, running from mighty festival hits like Anatomy of a Fall and Dogman (both in competition, neither prized) to a handful of modest but well-liked regional works that included the emotion-packed documentary-musical From Abdul to Leila by French-Iraqi director Leila Albayaty; the Iraq-Kurdistan Transient Happiness, a bittersweet slice of life involving an elderly woman’s relationship with her husband, directed by Sina Muhammed; and Mohamed Kordofani’s touching and paradoxical Sudanese tale of two women that bowed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, Goodbye, Julia. Worthy of note was Mohammed Latrèche’s delightful bio-documentary Zinet, Algiers, Happiness that rediscovered a forgotten Algerian filmmaker from the Seventies, screened in tandem with Zinet’s offbeat directing effort set in the Algiers’ Casbah, Tahia Ya Didou, which has recently been restored.
The program also found room for German documaker Steffi Niederzoll’s aching Seven Winters in Tehran, which reconstructs the arrest of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 19-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man who attempted to rape her, and her seven years awaiting execution while her family frantically worked to save her. Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary Hollywoodgate, an account of how the director embedded himself for a year at a Taliban air force base, offers a unique behind-the-scenes view and won El Gouna’s best documentary award as well as the Fipresci prize.
One could only be impressed by the festival’s on-the-fly addition of a Window on Palestinian Cinema section which richly supplemented the many public expressions of distress over the ongoing war. Put together in just two months, the section demonstrated the value of cinema as a psychological and informational tool able to portray the background to the war and stimulate discussion. Films like The Teacher, a debut by British-Palestinian director Farah Nabulsi set in the West Bank amid Israel bulldozers, armed settlers and an Israeli soldier held hostage, showed how extraordinarily relevant films can be to current reality.
Beyond the Middle East, the competition program proved eclectic enough to open a door on experimental oddities like Lubdhak Chatterjee’s debut feature Whispers of Fire & Water, the tale of an Indian audio installation artist who, in the course of collecting sounds in a coal mining region, bears witness to the plundering of the environment while, on another level, he reaches for a spiritual experience in nature.
As part of her goals as artistic director, Khoury also aimed to widen audiences for the festival’s films beyond El Gouna. Cairo’s Zawya theater, one of the country’s most important arthouse cinemas, screened a week-long program for filmgoers in the busy capital, where a presidential election was just held. Outside the venue, remnants of the election posters of incumbent president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi are still hanging.
The president will start his third term amid many challenges, with freedom of expression and organized labor among them. One month before the Gaza war began, Egypt’s film and TV unions and labor organizations began to protest against controlled compensation, lack of representation, long working hours, and the monopoly of certain state-affiliated production companies such as the media conglomerate United Media Services. The movement has cooled down due to the war; nevertheless, the Egyptian film and TV industry is very likely in for a major challenge in the next few years.
While Palestine was an open topic in El Gouna, international festivals are left to figure out how they will approach the conflict. Notably, Amsterdam’s documentary festival IDFA witnessed a controversy after pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated on stage during the opening ceremony, and upcoming festivals such as Rotterdam’s IFFR and the Berlinale could be in for a similar challenge to guarantee participants’ rights to free speech while dealing with the policy of their governments.
Over the years, IFFR has offered dedicated programmes focusing on the Palestinian cause, and has supported Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers who are for coexistence and critical of the occupation. In the past weeks in Germany, several Palestinian cultural activities have been canceled by governmental institutions. It will be interesting to see how the Berlinale, which received €12.9 million in institutional funding last year from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, manages to juggle polarizing opinions on the two sides.