Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iranian drama film “Empty Nets” was Monday named winner of the AFF Feature Fiction Award at the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Behrooz Karamizade, it collected an A$10,000 ($6,320) cash prize.
06.10.2023 - 08:05 / variety.com
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, whose epic “Kira and El Gen” about local resistance to British occupation recently scored at the local box office, is being feted with a career award by the El Gouna Film Festival. The Egyptian fest, running Oct.
13-20 in the Red Sea resort roughly 250 miles south of Cairo, is also paying tribute to the Sudanese Film Group, a groundbreaking collective of filmmakers, and is planning an homage to late great British-French icon Jane Birkin. Hamed (pictured above) broke out internationally in 2006 with his bold adaptation of Alaa Aswany’s bestselling novel “The Yacoubian Building” that became a game-changer in Egytian cinema due to the way it depicted homosexuality, Islamic fundamentalism and government corruption.
After “Yacoubian” become a local hit and travelled widely Hamed scored again big time with “The Blue Elephant,” a thriller with supernatural elements and its sequel “The Blue Elephant 2” that more recently broke Arab box office records. “Kira and El Gen” is based on the book “1919″ by Ahmed Mourad (who also penned “The Blue Elephant” novel).
With a budget north of $10 million Hamed’s latest sprawling epic has been touted as the most expensive film in Egyptian cinema history and stars some of the biggest names in Arab cinema, including Karim Abdel Aziz, Ahmed Ezz, Hind Sabri and Ahmad Malek. British actor Sam Hazeldine also appears.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iranian drama film “Empty Nets” was Monday named winner of the AFF Feature Fiction Award at the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Behrooz Karamizade, it collected an A$10,000 ($6,320) cash prize.
Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.
Marcelo Cajueiro “A Batalha da Rua Maria Antonia,” directed by Vera Egito, nabbed the main Redentor prize for fiction film at the 2023 Rio de Janeiro International Film Fest which wrapped this year’s edition last weekend, consolidating its position as South America’s largest fest and world’s main showcase of Brazilian productions. The fest held the world premieres of 40 Brazilian features and four TV series.
Actress Charlotte Gainsbourg made a moving presentation of her documentary Jane By Charlotte, capturing her complex relationship with her late mother Jane Birkin, ahead of a screening at the Lumière Film Festival on Saturday.
Qatar’s Doha Film Institute (DFI) has cancelled the 11th edition of its Ajyal Film Festival, which was due to take place from November 8 to 16, due to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Ellise Shafer Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival has now been postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. The festival was previously rescheduled to Oct. 27- Nov.
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details about the eliminated contestant from Wednesday’s episode of The Masked Singer.
The 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival, which was due to run from November 15 to 24, has been postponed amid rising tensions in the Middle East due to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Cairo International Film Festival’s upcoming 45th edition has been canceled due to the Israel-Hamas conflict. The Cairo fest and market, which is the oldest running film event in the Middle East and Africa, announced its decision Wednesday on Instagram with the following statement: “Minister of Culture Dr. Neven El-Kelany has decided to postpone the 45th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, which was scheduled to take place from Nov.
Aramide Tinubu The American buffalo, or bison, is a massive animal. It can weigh more than a ton and span over 10 feet wide, excluding its tail. As fascinating as the mammal is, a four-hour series centering on its origins, decline and revitalization wouldn’t exactly be riveting for a general audience.
Anitta has a new music video on the way and we have some hot photos of her on set!
Lourdes Leon is paying homage to her Queen of Pop mother Madonna!
The co-heads of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, which was rescheduled at the eleventh hour this week due to the Israel-Gaza crisis, have vowed that the event will go ahead in some shape or form.
The Anchoress, aka Catherine Anne Davies, has paid homage to Depeche Mode in her stripped-back new cover of ‘Enjoy The Silence’ – watch the video on NME first below.The cover is the latest from Davies’ new album, ‘Versions’, released today (October 6) – a project that has seen her re-imagine ten songs by artists including Manic Street Preachers, The Cure, Nirvana, Nico and Halsey.The latest cover is accompanied by a video directed by JJ Eringa and is a scene-by-scene recreation of the original video released by Depeche Mode in 1990 and created by Anton Corbijn.Speaking to NME about the new song and video, Davies said: “The concept behind the album was for me to flex my production and arrangement skills and revisit classic songs to challenge the listener to think about them in a new way, so when JJ suggested to me that we attempted a loving frame by frame recreation of the original video for Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy The Silence’ it seemed like the perfect fit for the intentions of the project.“The original video had a much more impressive travel budget than we had but with the ingenuity of director JJ Eringa…we were able to pretty much approximate every shot from Anton Corbijn’s original video. Half was shot on a DIY green screen in my manager’s living room while the other half was shot guerilla style around the local countryside.
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is back after a one-year hiatus with a rich mix of Arabic and international titles launching into the Middle East and plenty of promising projects from Arab countries set to be unveiled to prospective partners at its CineGouna industry side. The event launched in 2017 by Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris – whose brother Samih built the El Gouna resort in a swathe of desert near the tourist town of Hurghada 250 miles south of Cairo – was put on pause in 2022 ostensibly due to the country’s economic crisis following five editions during which fest co-founder Amr Mansi and chief Intishal Al Timimi had managed to rapidly put El Gouna on the international festival map while also making it a favourite with the local crowd.
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Gael Garcia Bernal is set to preside over the jury of the upcoming Rome Film Festival. The Mexican actor, director and producer will be judging entries and bestowing prizes in the rebooted fest’s main section, which is now known as Progressive Cinema. Films competing for Rome prizes include Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s “Un Amor,” about a young woman socially and sexually exploited by a rural patriarchy; Iranian director Farhad Delaram, in which a former filmmaker turned medic decides to help a female political prisoner escape from a psych ward; and French director Mehdi Fikri’s “After The Fire,” which turns on a French woman of North African descent who seeks justice after her younger brother dies suspiciously after being stopped by the police.
Paramount+ has released two key art images for the upcoming sequel to the Emmy-winning comedy series Frasier, which debuts Oct. 12. Both posters feature the title character front and center. In fact, the sequel’s star and executive producer Kelsey Grammer, who is reprising his signature character as Frasier Crane, is the only cast member from the sequel pictured.
Mohamed Salah missed out on emulating David Beckham and Erling Haaland when nine-man Liverpool suffered a last-gasp defeat in their Premier League showdown with Tottenham.
So, filmmaker Gareth Edwards is doing the interview round for his latest sci-fi extravaganza, “The Creator,” starring John David Washington. It’s a movie heavily indebted to “Blade Runner,” “Apocalypse Now,” and even “Star Wars” (read our review here).
Sudan has submitted Mohamed Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia for Best International Feature Film at the 96thAcademy Awards.