The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) will kick off on Tuesday, with high expectations for the 39th edition.
The ten-day festival will take place in several halls of the Cairo Opera House, as well as Downtown’s Odeon Cinema, Zamalek Cinema, and the Mall of Arabia.
Hany Abu-Assad’s “The Mountain Between Us” will be the opening film of the festival. The CIFF will screen 175 films this year from 53 countries, including Australia as the guest country of honour, showing ten renowned Australian films.
The festival will organise a seminar on 25 November, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, “which is organised by the UN to raise awareness about the issues women face in their daily lives and how the international film industry treats and approaches the subject,” according to the festival’s catalogue.
The festival will pay tribute to talents in the film industry who lost their lives this years, such as director Mohamed Kamel Kaliouby, critic Samir Farid, director Jean Chamoun, and actress Jeanne Moreau.
Actor Hussein Fahmy will head the official competition jury. Meanwhile, the FIPRESCI jury includes the critics Borborah Bitopan from India, Kiva Reardon from Canada, and Salah Hashem Moustafa from Egypt.
The festival will also feature the 3rd edition of Panorama of the New Egyptian Films, which will shed light on the most prominent Egyptian films from 2016 and 2017, with English subtitles. The program aims to introduce guests to the newest aspects of the filmmaking scene in Egypt.
