The Cairo International Film Festival is enjoying an injection of youthful energy with the return of veteran Hussein Fahmy to the top-floor office. After serving as its president from 1998 to 2001, the renowned Egyptian movie star (he has over 100 films to his credit as an actor) accepted a second term at the behest of Egypt’s ministry of culture. His mandate was interrupted last year when the festival, due to start a bare month after the war in Gaza began, was postponed as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
One noticeable effect of the war is the sizeable number of Palestinian films that swell the festival program. Noting how Europe’s big meets Cannes, Venice and Berlin have embraced political discussion over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Fahmy says he feels an Arab festival can debate the war on Palestine. “It is equally important to bring attention to our own urgent matters, particularly the Palestinian and Lebanese causes, which we prioritize.”
In the meantime, a number of new ideas have grown and borne fruit at the 45th edition now underway. With a record 190 films screening and ten different juries judging them, the selection has never been so wide or eclectic. And Fahmy can only express his joy that seats are sold out every day because the festival is once more trending with the young audiences of the city. In addition to noon-to-midnight screenings at the seven major film venues in downtown Zamalek, a partnership with the Vox Cinema chain has expanded the festival’s reach to suburban audiences this year.
“The world has changed since my first years as president,” Fahmy admits, with new technology, cell phones and social media. His vision of leadership includes rejuvenating the festival by “putting blood into it”. Certainly the veteran festival, the oldest and most stable in the Mideast, has been forced to adapt to the changing film scene around it. In the last six years the MENA region has seen the demise of the big Gulf festivals in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha and the birth of new festivals like Egypt’s El Gouna and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea. For Fahmy, they are still in their infancy: “Cairo has its own identity and there is no competition”. His response is to court new audiences through discounts to film schools and film societies, while continuing Cairo’s long tradition of supporting the Egyptian and Arab film industry within an international program.
“We have grown familiar with the American films that we see and love, that fill our film theaters all year long and have a certain rhythm. But genuine movies rooted in the culture of other countries have their own rhythms, and Cairo offers a chance to experience them.”
The festival has become a vital platform for viewing not only recent art house films, but restored classics of Egypt’s film heritage. Again it was the president who provided the stimulus after convincing a private film studio to finance the restoration of ten black-and-white films in their 1,400-title library – followed by another batch of ten. The before-and-after results were a highlight of the festival’s opening ceremony, a clever montage that revealed a startling improvement in image quality. The audience was appreciative, and in the following days the festival received numerous requests for new restorations.
A dream for the future? In the wake of the recent opening of the mammoth Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) near the Giza pyramids, Fahmy is championing a proposal to build a Grand Egyptian Museum for the film industry that would house historical artefacts of an industry that dates back to 1920.
