El Gouna Film Festival, in its sixth edition, held this week in El Gouna, continues to focus on developing the film industry.
El Gouna Festival is proud to announce a new and huge project this year, in partnership with a real estate development company, to launch the first phase of a “founding fund” worth 8 million Egyptian pounds, to provide the necessary financial support for Egyptian and Arab filmmakers to start developing their film project ideas. This announcement came during the sixth edition of El Gouna Film Festival, in the presence of a number of media professionals and a large number of celebrities.
The fund seeks to discover new cinematic talents who have created original stories, by securing the initial funding phase, so that filmmakers and producers can then communicate with institutions, producers, funding and grant programs, to obtain additional funding.
Commenting on the new partnership, El Gouna Film Festival Artistic Director Marianne Khoury said, “The new initiative is a crucial development phase for filmmakers who have strong and exceptional stories and aspire to share them with the world.”
Khoury pointed out that the fund supports 10 film projects, with the first phase dedicated to developing feature films, feature documentaries and short films, as there is an urgent need to produce original content and accommodate the demand for it from all prominent entities in the film industry in today’s world.. Two different phases of the fund are scheduled to be held in April and September, and the details and selection mechanism will be announced as soon as possible.”
For his part, the festival’s executive director, Amr Mansi, expressed his enthusiasm for the new initiative, saying, “El Gouna Film Platform has proven its success since its first year, so we sought to ensure that the festival’s impact on the film industry extends throughout the year, not just during the festival period.”
Published December 17, 2023.
