Archive for the ‘CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL’ Category

45th Cairo International Film Festival Awards | 2024

The New Year That Never Came won the Golden Pyramid for best film at Cairo’s 45th International Film Festival (CIFF). The dark comedy unfolds on the cusp of Romania’s 1989 revolution and took the ‘Horizons’ award for best film along with the Fipresci prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival. It was written and directed by Romania’s Bogdan Mureșanu.

Russia’s Natalia Nazarova won the Silver Pyramid award for Postmarks, an upbeat drama about a woman with cerebral palsy whose life changes when she meets a sailor. A special mention was awarded to Alina Khojevanova and best actor was won Maxim Stoyanov.

The Bronze Pyramid award for the best first or second film by a director went to Brazil’s Pedro Freire for drama Malu. The lead Yara De Novaes, was award the best actress prize. 

Egyptian melodrama Spring Came Laughing, took the Henry Barrakat Award for its director Noha Adel. The film also won best artistic contribution, the Salah Abu Seif Award for best director and the Fipresci prize.

The Arab film prize was awarded to A State Of Passion– which also won the Special Jury Prize for Feature Documentary.  Abu Zaabal 89 took the Best Feature Documentary Award.  

Earlier in the festival, Hussein Fahmy, President of CIFF, expressed his enthusiasm for a new agreement emphasising the festival’s commitment to fostering international cooperation in the film industry with partnerships that aim to spotlight Egypt as a global cinematic hub, offering extraordinary filming locations and modern infrastructure. The aim is to continue attracting major international productions to the region, and supporting the film industry locally and globally, while promoting Egyptian culture and heritage on the world stage. 

In a related announcement, the festival revealed a new collaboration with Media Production City, aiming to expand opportunities for cinematic production and establish Egypt as a central hub for global filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor

45th CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 13-22 NOVEMBER 2024

Madanyia (2024) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir: Mohamed Subahi | Sudan, Doc 75′

A lively documentary despite its tragic subject matter charting the history of modern Sudan through the lives of three people in today’s Khartoum.

The country has experienced turbulent upheavals but on the streets of the capital there is an indomitable spirit at play. Here ordinary people are striving for democracy buoyed by their sunny enthusiasm and determination to bring about change. To keep us appraised of Sudan’s recent history the director makes ample use of inter-titles with key dates and historical facts.

Acting as his own DoP and editor Mohamed Subahi sets the scene at a pivotal moment in the Sudanese Revolution that began in December 2018. The three are campaigning in various local movements but their interweaving stories are full of positivity and hope, and the mood is enhanced with vibrant camerawork by Subahi and his co-DoP Algaddal Hassan who capture the febrile intensity and the passion of the Sudanese youth who aspire towards a fully democratic republic irrespective of creed and colour. Sadly, the only violence seem to come from the authorities. Despite ugly scenes that see the police opening fire, the people press on with their peaceful protest, terrified out of the lives. @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

They Will Be Dust (2024) Cairo Film Festival 2024

Dir: Carlos Marques-Marcet | Cast: Alfredo Castro, Angela Molina, Monica Almirall | Spain 106mins

Euthanasia is a hot topic at the moment with The Room Next Door taking the Golden Lion at Venice 2024 and now this end of life drama from Spain’s Carlos Marques-Marcet who puts a positive spin on the subject winning an award Toronto and Valladolid only weeks later.

The film is so upbeat and pragmatic it incorporates jaunty dance sequences and even are aria from Maria Callas into the storyline that kicks off with a histrionic outburst from Claudia (Molina), an actor who has been struck down with a brain tumour and is quickly calmed down by her theatre director husband Flavio (Castro) in their comfortable home. Many may find the comedy treatment inappropriate but it suits the emotional pitch of a couple who are facing up to the final years with jokey humour and dignity.

Claudia wants to go to Dignitas Switzerland but Flavio refuses to left be left alone and opts to die by her side. But their daughter Violeta (Batet) is not convinced, and finds herself engaging in persuasive debate between her parents in a discussion that give the drama  potent emotional freight although the subject is not played out with quite the same rigour as the feeling that erupt.

Such is their devotion to one another that Claudia and Flavio decide to renew their vows with some cringeworthy moments for their extended family. It’s always awkward and faintly embarrassing when long-term couples insist on egging the omelette by imposing their  declarations of devotion and undying love for each other on their nearest and dearest. But these two are so wrapped up in one another they fail to notice or even care. And in some ways this adds grist to the drama that plays out, as predicted, with an airing of privately shared songs as so on.

When Claudia is asked by the clinic to provide a “playlist to die to” it soon becomes clear that she is very much a diva who wants her ‘swansong’ to be a memorable performance for everyone in the family whether appropriate or not. Veteran actor Molina certainly gives gusto to her dying character as the star turn of this intense and intelligent film. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | Special Screening

 

Spring Comes on Laughing (2024) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir/Wri: Noha Adel | Cast: Main cast: Reem Safwat, Rehab Anan, Carol Ackad, Kawthar Younis | Egypt/France. 2024. 96mins

Conflict is never far away in this female centric film inspired by a poem from Egyptian Salah Jahin that begins ’Spring came on laughing but finds me in sorrow’.

A first feature for Egypt’s Noha Adel, screening at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival, shows how an upbeat anodyne conversation can suddenly take a turn into darker more confrontational territory when four women get together to discuss their lives, loves and dreams in Cairo. Tonally the drama feels rather one note with emotions running high and often out of control, each person raising their voice but not really listening to the another.

The film is made up of four spring-set tales and a wrapping finale. It opens with Salwa (Sally Abdou) and her daughter Reem (Reem Safwat) meeting their elderly neighbour Mukhtar (Mukhtar Younis) and his son Shady (Shady Hakim) for afternoon tea. A polite cultural exchange of views about theatre, cinema and literature suddenly turns tense when someone says the wrong thing, and the dynamic switches from convivial tete-a-tete to pistols at dawn. .

The next segment takes place in May at a birthday lunch for Zazou (Rehab Anan). The entente cordiale once again turns sour in a celebration that should have been joyful. These women seem intent on jumping down each other’s throats, and when a simple misunderstanding causes offence, longterm friends turn into sworn enemies.

The previous month, in April, the scene is set at a beauty salon where one of the staff, Abeer (Reem Al Aqqad) is suddenly accused of theft, unearthing a litany of petty grievances as souls are bared in no uncertain terms, and events turn histrionic. A March wedding is then disrupted when Kawthar (Kawthar Younis), an uninvited guest, makes an unwelcome appearance much to the consternation of the bride Lili (Carol Ackad).

Sometimes feeling like four short films welded together, rather than a cohesive whole feature, Spring Comes on Laughing feels  repetitive with the same grievances being aired and the same hysterical soul-searching. The women want to project an image of success and satisfaction but this is only skin deep. Scratch the surface and they are actually dissatisfied, angry and negative, especially about the men in their lives. This chaotic vibe is accentuated by Sara Yahia’s mobile camera that ducks and dives in an attempt to keep up with the mayhem.

So a brave attempt at allowing women to air their views but a space for calm contemplation and measured debate, rather than continuous hysteria, would be have been most welcome. MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

The Beggar | Al Shahat (1973) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir: Houssain El-Din Mustafa | Egypt, Drama 122′

The Beggar is a lyrical love story directed by Houssaim El-Din Mustafa who looks at one man’s search for the meaning of life in 1970s Cairo.

This seventies cult classic really captures the era with a score of hits from Marc Bolan (“Jeapster for your Love”), Semprini and even Jimi Hendrix. A nightclub singer croons Shirley Bassey’s “Something in the Way He Moves”; a teenager rocks false eye lashes and black ‘kinky boots’. There’s snogging in bed, cleavages aplenty (and that’s just the women). There’s even a product placement for Johnny Walker whisky.

Sexual jealousy, infidelity and religion must have been provocative themes in the Middle East back then, yet Egypt emerges as a fun, permissive place to be, at least for middle classes. But what starts as a lighthearted comedy often drifts into dark melodrama. These tonal shifts are managed with dexterity, the humour giving way to some emotionally fraught scenes in chintzy domestic settings by the Nile with a riverside panorama that shows the 5-star Cairo Sofitel still under construction.

 

The focus is Mr Omar (Mahmoud Moursy), a sharp-suited lawyer caught in a midlife crisis and a loveless marriage to Zeinab (Maryam Fakhruddin). The stooge is his beret-toting, pipe-smoking friend Mr Mustafa (a sort of Egyptian Jacques Tati) who introduces him to nightclub singer Miss Margaret. Things move fast, but sadly married men are not her bag, and Omar realises his predicament.

The lawyer then meets Belly dancer Warda at the Capri Nightclub. And he’s smitten. Put off by his marital status and kids, Warda also turns him down. So Omar vents his frustration by accelerating at top speed when driving her home: it’s a clever psychologic ploy that uses terror to create sexual tension allowing Omar to finally get his leg over. Trying to change his life, he creates a kitsch love nest with a wardrobe full of the latest fashions for Warda, but soon, as predicted, he loses interest.

Omar’s problem is not clearly sexual frustration, but a lack of self-realisation. Financial success is not the only goal in life. Wracked with guilt at lying to his wife and daughter, and unfulfilled by his romantic encounters, the lawyer gives up his practice to a former colleague Osman, and turns to Sufism in the hope of enlightenment, amid scenes that use magic realism to push home the spiritualism of this branch of Islam.

The Beggar is an intelligent and entertaining film despite its rather convoluted and confusing ending. Seventies Egypt is still a man’s world where most women are seen as simpering side-kicks, happy to stay and home and look after the children, even though some are outwardly emancipated in the creative industry. Interestingly the director highlights the close father/daughter relationship that sees Omar, by his own omission, as his teenager’s close friend, and not just her loving her father. @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

The State of Passion (2024) Cairo international Film Festival 2024

WriDirs: Carol Mansour, Muna Khalidi | Doc 89′

Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi are close friends of the Abu Sittan family and explore from an intensely personal angle the life and work of Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah who works tirelessly to save lives in his native Gaza. 

Hassan is actually based in London where he runs a Harley Street clinic specialising in complex lip surgery. But when duty calls he jumps on a plane to the region and provides emergency support, just as he has done during five conflicts involving Israel, as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

An opening segment makes uses of mobile phone footage and storyboarded images to introduce the well known surgeon who is passionately driven in a humanitarian cause to treat survivors of airstrikes and bombs blasts during the recent conflict in Gaza that has touched so many lives.

There are interviews with his mother and wife Dima who describe their fears of living with a close loved one whose life puts him in danger every single day. The film them scrolls backwards and forwards describing his childhood and education and his determination to become a doctor.

Avoiding sensationalism the directors follow Ghassan’s emergency surgery in the only single functioning hospital in the war zone where he is forced to choose which victims are worth saving. He remembers one night performing six amputations involving children. The injuries are brutal and indiscriminate so he operates a tough triage system. Sometimes only limbs are discovered in the rubble. There is a cemetery dedicated to children’s appendages. 

In scenes of utter devastation we witness bomb sites strewn with tee-shirts and plastic shoes that have literally melted in the heat of the blasts. Gruelling, almost unwatchable scenes in the aftermath to an incursion bear witness to the broken bodies and blood-soaked floors. No family is left untouched by the ghastly events.

Most recently he has been lobbying in the UK parliament for end to the genocide, citing Israel’s purported use of white phosphorus in attacks on children and babies. Together with his solicitor he is mounting a war crimes case. And it’s here that the documentary claims the Israelis are trying to discredit his efforts. @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

Film Restoration and Production in Egypt | Cairo Film Festival 2024

A pioneer in the African and Arab world Egyptian cinema has an impressive legacy that dates back to the 1890s. With over four thousand features, shorts and documentaries produced across the region, the country’s film industry has been a cornerstone of creativity showcasing the nation’s cultural heritage and creating a bridge between the generations.

Flaws are removed by hand | copyright Filmuforia.com

 

Many of these film classics are being restored to their former glory at the Egyptian Media Production City, on the outskirts of the capital Cairo. This vast hub stretches over two million square metres in addition to one more million square metres located within the Media Free Zone. EMPC is home to ninety state of art film studios, where new films and series are currently in production. These services contribute to providing Arab and foreign production companies with all the necessary facilities for shooting their films including sound stages, backlots and a state of the art Dolby Atmos studio for sound mixing.

 

copyright Filmuforia.com

In the Heritage Restoration Centre a team of highly experienced craftsman undertake the process of restoration of TV and classic films which includes repairing and correcting flaws, cleaning,  scanning and transforming into digital content. This gives cineastes and newcomers to classic cinema the chance to experience films for the first time in high resolution formats.

colour correction before and after at EMPC | copyright Filmuforia.com

 

This year’s Cairo International Film Festival presented fourteen newly restored classics for screening in their own special strand. Festival president, director and actor Hussein Fahmy, is fully supportive of the restoration of classic cinema and is currently committed to restoring a further ten films at the Egypt Media Production City. @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

Colour correction process

All We Imagine as Light (2024) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir/Wri: Payal Kapadia | Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon | India Drama 110′

Writer-director Payal Kapadia‘s Mumbai set feature All We Imagine As Light was the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in nearly three decades; an impressive achievement for a first time filmmaker, especially an Indian woman who went on to win the Grand Prix in 2024.

The last time an Indian film made it into the main competition was Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994. Sadly it went home empty-handed losing out to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Kapadia’s poetic yet powerful documentary, A Night of Knowing Nothing, won the Golden Eye for best documentary at Cannes in 2021.

Unfolding in two parts and shifting deftly from realism to reverie All We Imagine As Light centres on two women caught in impossible love stories in modern day Mumbai. Prabha, a nurse, shares a flat with Anu, yet they hardly know each other and are further constrained from forming a friendship due to shameful secrets that trap them from sharing their personal lives. Both women are disappointed by love, for differing reasons, and this emotional claustrophobia pervades the first part of the drama.

Anu, a Hindu, is in love with a Muslim man and forced to conceal her relationship due to societal constraints. All the two of them want is to make love but this is frowned upon, even nowadays.

Prabha is caught in an arranged marriage with a man who has since cleared off to his village. One day, out of the blue, a rice cooker arrives in the post, supposedly from her estranged husband. This innocent gift sends Prabha into a deep depression, opening up fresh wounds of romantic disillusionment and upsetting her emotional equilibrium once again. She is a married woman constrained by all the ties that it implies, but the disappearance of her husband leaving her lonely and desperate.

The second part of film brings an uplifting almost dreamlike tonal shift that sees the women freed from their inertia when they set off on a road trip to a beach resort where a mystical forest creates  space for dreams to be unleashed.

Kapadia’s film touches on traditional themes of abandonment, religious intolerance, female friendship and sexual liberation that are still all too relevant in today’s India with its impressive technical and financial advances: Men are free many women are still sadly stuck in the dark ages. Meanwhile in the West men and women are enjoying the freedoms of gay marriage, gay parenthood, and sexual transitioning. A thoughtful, richly thematic and beautifully captured film with two sensitive performances from leads Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha. @MeredithTaylor

IN CINEMAS FROM 23 NOVEMBER 2024

 

Passing Dreams (2024) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Wri/Dir: Rashid Masharawi | Drama 81’

An intelligent and thoughtful film kicks off this year’s CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL  Passing Dreams is a feature-length Palestinian film written and directed by Rashid Masharawi. Upbeat and full of optimism throughout the film follows Sami, a 12-year-old boy, who embarks on a journey across Palestine with his uncle (Ashraf Barhom) and teenage cousin Maryam (Emilia Massou)

It will be an eventful voyage of discovery – of each other, and the people the meet along the way who share their stories reflecting the difficulties of restrictive life and a thwarted existence. So what  starts as a family-centred road movie broadens out into a complex study of this Middle Eastern country and its hopes and aspirations in the occupied territories.

The trip will take them from a refugee camp in the West Bank, where Sami lives, to other Palestinian cities such as Bethlehem, the Old City of Jerusalem, and Haifa all atmospherically captured in Duraid Munajim’s limpid camerawork and set to a lilting score from Johanni Curtet.

Significantly the pigeon is carrying a ring bearing a small blue pearl, a keepsake from Sami’s grandma to help him through life. In some ways this pigeon comes to represent hope and the future, so finding it is vital to keep Sami’s dreams alive. Sometimes there’s a safety in hope: It can suspend us from to need to achieving anything but brings us closer to our each other in the process. And that’s surprising upshot of this tenderly crafted latest feature from the award-winning Palestinian filmmaker. @MeredithTaylor

THE CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 13-23 NOVEMBER 2024

Cairo International Film Festival 2024 | 13-22 November 2024

Cairo International Film Festival is internationally accredited as the oldest and only continuously running film festival in the Arab world, Africa, and the Middle East. Taking place from 13th November to 22nd November the 45th edition is led by its President Hussein Fahmy and his director Essam Zakaria.

This year’s celebration will include 194 films from 72 countries around the world and will open with the World Premiere of Passing Dreams (in competition) directed by Palestine’s Rashid Masharawi and starring Ashraf Barhom, Emilia Masson and Adel Abu Ayyash who plays a young boy pursuing an elusive carrier pigeon across Palestine believing it will return home.

Passing Dreams (2024) courtesy of Cairo International Film Festival

 

The Golden Pyramid Award – International Competition 2024

An international jury headed by Danis Tanović will decide on the winning film in this competition strand. Helping him are Ahmed Hafez (Editor, Egypt), Andrea Pallaoro (Director, Italy), Ángela Molina (Actress, Spain); Aisha Ben Ahmed (Actress, Tunisia); Anocha Suwichakornpong (Director, Thailand); Sylvie Pialat (Producer, France).

Moondove (2024)

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Competition hopefuls include this year’s top titles: Julie Delpy’s Meet the Barbarians (2024); Golden Globe nominated Memoir of a Snail, an enchanting anime with intergenerational appeal. There’s also another chance to see Constance Tsang’s Cannes 2024 awarded drama Blue Sun Palace.

Premieres include Necmi Sancak’s Ayse (2024), a family drama set against the changing face of Istanbul; 4 O’Clock Flowers, the feature debut from Egyptian fimmaker Khedija Lemkecher; and Moondove written, directed and produced in 2024 by award-winning filmmaker Karim Kassem.

4 O’Clock Flowers (2024) courtesy of Cairo International Film Festival

 

Arze (2024)

HORIZONS OF ARAB CINEMA

The latest Palestinian feature documentaries will compete in this section that includes the Best Palestinian film award.

Amongst the titles Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi’s A State Of Passion: Ghassan Abu Sittah, raises the profile of British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Ghassan Abu Sittah, who worked tirelessly around the clock for over a month in the casualty department of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals.

Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed’s Gazan Tales, centres on the lives of four men in the Gaza Strip and Maxime Lindon’s Holidays In Palestine follows 30 year old Shadi, an activist who leaves France to return to his village in Palestine.

Other films in this selection include Diaries from Lebanon (2024) a Berlinale-winning documentary looking at the tragedy unfolding in and around present day Beirut; and Mira Shaib’s feature debut Arze (2024) a family drama that sees a single mother and son struggling to survive in the city after they lose their source of revenue: a scooter.

The Second Wife (1967)

 

CAIRO CLASSICS

Celebrates a selection of international cult classics included renowned  director Salah Abouseif’s timeless masterpiece of Egyptian cinema The Second Wife, (1967) – a microcosm of Egyptian country life is reflected through the story of a corrupt mayor who controls the village. Stars Suad Hosny, Salah Mansour and Shukri Sarhan.

 

CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL | TRIBUTES 2024

THE GOLDEN PYRAMID – HONORARY TRIBUTE

Yousri Nasrallah – Director and Writer, Egypt

In a film career spanning over four decades, Nasrallah began as a film critic for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir. In 1982 he was an assistant to filmmaker Youssef Chahine in the film An Egyptian Story, followed by Goodbye Bonaparte, for which he co-wrote the screenplay. He soon became one of the leading protagonists of the auteur cinema movement with dramas such as the epic love story Bab el Shams (2004/5). Nasrallah is the first Egyptian filmmaker to chair the short film jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Other collaborations include working with German director Volker Schlöndorff and Syrian director Omar Amiralay.

FATEN HAMAMA – EXCELLENCE AWARD

Danis Tanović – Film director, producer, screenwriter – Bosnia & Herzegovina

The Bosnian film director, producer and screenwriter studied piano at the Sarajevo Music Academy before enrolling at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo. However, in 1992, the siege of the city forced him to stop studying and instead to turn his talents to documentary films, which he continued in Belgium after a spell at the Institut Supérieur des Arts in the Belgian capital.

Tanovic went on to write and direct the 2001 Bosnian feature No Man’s Land, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the European Film Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the César for the Best First Feature film, and a the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film amongst others. His filmography also includes Iron Picker (2013), Tigers (2014), Death in Sarajevo (2016), which was awarded the Silver Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. He is the only director from Bosnia and Herzegovina to win an Oscar.

FATEN HAMAMA – EXCELLENCE AWARD

Ahmed Ezz – Actor – Egypt

After studying English at Ain Shams University. Ezz embarked on a film career gaining international recognition with his breakthrough in A Teenager’s Diary directed by Inas El-Degheidy in 2001. Roles in blockbuster films include Private Alexandria (2005), The Hostage in 2006, and Transit Prisoner in 2008, all directed by Sandra Nashaat. Other performances include the big budget war film The Passage about the Arab-Israeli War of Attrition, his first collaboration with the great director Sherif Arafa. The two worked together for a second time in The crime (2022), and in the same year, he presented the film Kira And Jinn with director Marwan Hamed in their first collaboration.

Cairo Film Connection (CFC) also takes place during the festival (17-20 Nov). The 10th Edition comprises a series of eighteen projects in their development stage. The selected works include six from Egypt, two each from Tunisia, Iraq, and Lebanon, and one each from Kuwait, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria.

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 13 – 22 NOVEMBER 2024

 

 

Diaries from Lebanon (2024) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir: Myriam El Hajj | with Joumana Haddad, Perla Joe Maalouli, Georges Moufarrej | Lebanon / France / Qatar / Saudi Arabia 2024 | Arabic, Subtitles: English | 110′ | Colour | World premiere | Documentary form

Lebanon’s ongoing conflict is complex. Over the years many filmmakers have documented various aspects of the nation’s continuing strife that seems to stem from internal struggles as well as external forces; not least the current issues with Israel. All very confusing for the rest of the world: War and Lebanon have almost become synonymous in our collective consciousness.

Three people share their input in this new documentary from Myriam El Hajj, founder member of Rawiyat – Sisters in Film, a collective of women filmmakers from the Arab world. Diaries from Lebanon is her second documentary and takes us back to 2018 and brings together three voices. The first is a feminist writer, poet and activist named Joumana who stands for election to the Lebanese parliament, defying a political system that has been suffocating her country for 40 years. The film shows how Joumana is voted in, only to be fraudulently ousted the very next day, leaving her supporters furious and leading to more unrest and violent demonstrations in the streets of Beirut.

Another feisty woman, Perla Joe, soon becomes a symbol of this uprising, capturing the imagination of young people who feel increasingly marginalised in a place where war has become the only unifying force in their collective experience.

Meanwhile the past rears its head in the shape of Georges, a vociferous veteran of the Lebanese Civil War which lasted from 1975 to 1990. One of the original fighters, he lost a leg in the conflict but still believes in ‘the glory’ of war, rather than ‘the pity’ as Great War poet and soldier Wilfred Owen famously cited in 1917/18. Glory seems to be thin on the ground in this Middle Eastern nation, but the dream of peace and a worthwhile future is now the ultimate battle. @MeredithTaylor

CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

Charulata (1964) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Dir.: Satyajit Ray | Cast: Madhabi Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Shailen Mukherjee | India 1964; 117 min.

Another story of female alienation, set in Kolkata in the early 1880s and based on the short story “The Broken Nest” by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray uses utmost candour in this screen version, without betraying any of Tagore’s intentions. Charulata (M. Mukerjee) is the wife of Bhupati (S Mukerjee), who publishes a newspaper “The Sentinel”.

Feeling that his well-educated and elegant wife is lonely, Bhupati invites his older brother Umapada and wife, Manda, to come and stay. But they fail to alleviate his wife’s boredom so he asks his younger cousin Amal (S Chatterjee) into the household. Both share a passion for literature and the relationship becomes more intimate. Bhupati, submerged in his masculine world of politics, is unaware of this relationship. Amal, feeling guilty and threatened by Charulata’s intellect and his feelings for her, abruptly breaks off his relationship with disastrous consequences.

Very much in the style of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu (An Autumn Afternoon), this beautifully told domestic drama offers a pared-down, understated portrait of family life in nineteenth century India. Even in 1964, the role of the Indian woman of Charulata’s class, had not changed that much from the 1880s – many female viewers cried openly after the premiere and Ray was aware of the tension his film would create. Strangely, the Cannes Film Festival rejected the film but it was shown in the summer of 1965 at the Berlinale, were Ray won the “Silver Bear” for best director.

Despite the simplicity of the narrative, Charulata’s passion is still very much in evidence and Madhavii Mukherjee is still remembered today for her luminous performance. The monochrome camera glides through the big house with its imposing clocks and furniture as atmospheric sounds drift in from the street: the cries of street vendors and delicate birdsong from the garden.

Although surrounded by a legion of  of capable servants, Charulata is isolated until Amal appears. But despite his artistic sensitivity and feelings for her, Ray illustrates how he is still a man in a man’s world – not so far removed from Bhupati – and when challenged he is surprised that Charulata’s opinions differ (understandably) from his views and literary taste.

Amal is shown as a coward with feet of clay, a traitor to his own ideas. Bhupati loves his politics and uses his power to exercise to , his ego rather than to understand people. In the end, the question of reconciliation is left open: and the final frame is illuminating.

Penelope Houston summed it up in 1965 when she wrote in ‘Sight and Sound’: “…the interplay of sophistication and simplicity is extraordinary”. And for Satyajit Ray this would remain the favourite of his film, “the one he would make again exactly the same”. Today, CHARULATA still feels modern. AS

SCREENING IN THE CLASSICS STRAND | CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

 

Cleopatra (1963) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Joseph L Mankiewicz’ version of Cleopatra is a real romp and one of the most magnificent romps in the history of cinema.

A restored Egyptian classic this dazzling epic had an original budget of a whopping $44million, nearly bankrupting Fox Studios. Filming took over the lives of those involved for nearly three years.

Infact, the gradually deepening suntans of the cast bear witness to this lengthy project which started in London in 1960 and re-located to Rome, in search of a more favourable climate, where it finally wrapped over two years later after the original director, Rouben Mamoulian, had been sacked and Mankiewicz hired, fired and hired again in a bizarre turn of events where he was forced to re-write the script after shooting had begun.

But this wasn’t the only set-back, Elizabeth Taylor nearly died of pneumonia during filming and was forced to undergo an emergency tracheotomy, the scar is still livid and visible in most frames. She sported an extensive range of no less than sixty five different rigouts.

Not to be deterred by poor health, she gives a glowing performance of regal grace and persuasive feminine powerl, her legendary violet eyes glittering under the weight of increasingly elaborate eye-shadow. The film not only garnered a record $1million contract but also the undying love of Richard Burton: their affair made headlines and brought intense publicity to the production.

The film opens with a masterful Rex Harrison who plays an ebullient but fair-minded Julius Caesar, victorious in his defeat of Pompey but creaking with back problems and vulnerable to the sedicious charms of Taylor’s Cleopatra, who arrives notoriously wrapped in a carpet.

One of the extraordinary things about this production, apart from the elaborate sets, monstruous props, fabulous costumes, bronzed thighs peeping from leather battle-dresses and sculpted Nubian Slaves, are the unexpected faces who who go on to more banal productions: Richard O’Sullivan (Bless This House) as a teenage Ptolemy, and George Cole (who become Arthur Daley) as Flavius. Also starring here is a strawberry blonde Roddy McDowall as the sly, scheming Octavian.

Caesar and Cleopatra are a force to be reckoned with as their plot for World domination takes centre stage in the first part, and is sealed with the birth of Caesarion, adding a further boost to Caesar’s ego.

Peter Finch was originally set to play the role of Caesar but there’s a masculine joviality to the world-weary casting of Rex Harrison which works rather well here. Gwen Watford is suitably elegant and restrained in the role of the long-suffering Calpurnia. After Caesar is stabbed in the senate, Octavian takes over and forms a triumvirate several years later with arrival of Richard Burton as Mark Anthony while Cleopatra has returned to Egypt.

The onscreen chemistry of Burton and Taylor is the vital ingredient that illuminates the post-interval part of this production. Their love is clear for all to see, both on and off-screen. But Burton is a more vulnerable and blustering masculine figure compared to the more statesmanlike Rex Harrison. As Mark Anthony, Burton becomes intoxicated literally and metaphorically with the image of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. And she is suitably incandescent when Octavian arranges his ‘marriage’ to his sister Octavia, another slightly questionable casting of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’s’ Jean Marsh.

Full of glamour, pageantry, inflated egos, botched battle scenes and bloated banquet sequences courtesy of John DeCuir who went on to win an Oscar for the production. Cleopatra more or less swept the board at the Academy Awards that year in 1963 winning and the only cut back was to the final edit which was taken down to just over three hours from a massive six-hour director’s cut. Truly a legend. @MeredithTayor

CLEOPATRA screening during CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | RESTORED CLASSICS. 

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