Egyptian Engineer & Buisness man Naguib Sawiris, founder of the El Gouna Film Festival, gave his speech at the closing ceremony, saying: “It was difficult to complete this session, and I sat with Samih and we discussed the matter, and we agreed that in the end life goes on, and no one can question our intentions and sympathy with our people, and what is special about this session is that it is dedicated to our people in Palestine, and when I go back in memory to the films that have been on my mind for a long time, I find that they talk about sympathy or humanitarian matters, so they decided that the session would include films that support humanity.”
The closing ceremony was attended by a number of stars & celebraties, Elham Shaheen, Saba Mubarak, Lojain Omran, Asmaa Galal, Nada Moussa, Ahmed Magdy, Karima Mansour, Nardine Farag, Ahmed Kamal, Ahmed Hatem, Jihan El-Shamashirgy, Intishal Al-Tamimi and his wife, Amir Al-Masry, director Amr Salama and his wife, Mahmoud Hegazy and his wife, writer Mariam Naoum, Sedky Sakhr, Hesham Ashour, Taha Desouky and his wife, Mariam Al-Jundi, director Ali Al-Arabi, Ghalia Ben Ali, director Hadi Al-Bagouri, and Tamer Habib.
An exceptional session of the El Gouna Film Festival was held after it was postponed from its scheduled date last October due to the events in Gaza and the ongoing bombing by the Israeli aggression, where a program dedicated to Palestinian cinema was added, in addition to the festival program, to include screening a group of films about Palestine in cooperation with the Palestinian Film Foundation.
The sixth edition of the festival opened last Thursday without any festive events, in solidarity with the brothers in Gaza, as the festival management was keen to cancel the red carpet events, as well as the joyful atmosphere that the festival has been known for since its launch in 2017. The management also asked the attendees to wear black clothes, which is the same approach that will be applied at the closing ceremony this evening.
At the opening ceremony, the festival awarded the “Creative Achievement” award to director Marwan Hamed, and it was presented to him by the star Yousra. This comes in recognition of his rich cinematic career and his serious contribution to shaping the scene of the contemporary Egyptian and Arab cinema industry, through various works that constituted an artistic and commercial shift in recent years, so Hamed became one of the most important directors in Egypt and the Arab world, and he is now considered an integrated artistic institution that undertakes production and directing.
The sixth edition of El Gouna Film Festival included 23 films in the feature film competition, 15 films in the feature documentary competition, and 14 films in the short film competition, in addition to a group of films shown outside the competition, and they were shown throughout the days of the festival in addition to the seminars and sessions held in this edition.
Published December 21, 2023.
