The seventh edition of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival wrapped over the weekend with the $50,000 top prize going to French director Jonathan Millet’s Syrian drama Ghost Trail, and its star Adam Bessa winning Best Actor (see below for full awards list).
Launched in 2017 by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris in the Red Sea resort of El Gouna, created by his brother Samih Sawiris, the festival’s early years were characterized by glitzy red carpets and parties and Hollywood guests such as Owen Wilson, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal and Patrick Dempsey.
The festival has toned down the bling and glitz in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, sparked by the latter’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which killed more than 1,100 people, and resulted in the abduction of 253 people.
With the death toll in Gaza now topping 43,000 people alongside dire warnings from aid agencies that the 2.5M population risks famine due to Israeli restrictions on food supplies, the mood remains tense in the region.
This year, there were no Hollywood stars in attendance and fewer international guests from outside MENA, with the festival focusing on regional talents, and giving lifetime achievement awards to veteran Egyptian actor and producer Mahmoud Hemida, and Lebanese directorial duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
Artistic director Marianne Khoury, who is in her second year at the helm, says the absence of Hollywood talent was due to budget, rather than a curatorial decision.
With the Egyptian pound currently trading against the dollar 50% below what it was worth a year ago, following a Central Bank of Egypt decision in March to implement exchange rate flexibility, inviting Hollywood talent is on the backburner.
“It would have been nice to have someone. I’m not against it, but you need a budget, or be prepared to allocate part of your budget, because these people don’t come for free,” she says.
Khoury focused instead on the local El Gouna population, the wider Egyptian film industry – which transferred to the resort for the week in much the same way French industry heads to Cannes – and key indie film professionals from across the MENA region.
“I’ve been really focused on the audience, and we’ve had full houses which is amazing, because that has never happened before. For me, that’s huge,” says Khoury.
The festival even laid on extra sessions for Ghost Trail, prior to its win, and American and Chinese director Elizabeth Lo’s Venice and TIFF breakout Mistress Dispeller, due to demand.
Khoury and her team also put special effort into getting the 25,000-strong year-round population living and working in the resort – known as Gounies – into the cinemas.
“They were very difficult to penetrate. Many weren’t keen on the idea of the festival when it first launched, because the reason they came here years ago was for peace and quiet,” she says.
Special events targeting the local community included a screening of Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’s Oscar contender Flow for 1,000 local school children, and a free screening for hotel workers of Egyptian director Khairy Beshara’s 1995 satire Nutshell about a struggling hotelier who launches a competition to see who can eat the most food to attract more guests.
Fourteen festival titles also played in the Zawya Cinema in downtown Cairo owned by Misr International Films, the company founded by Khoury’s uncle, the late iconic Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, and in which she is a managing partner.
The festival played around 80 features and shorts over the course of its nine days, with a mix of international indie titles and bigger festival films. Khoury also managed to show The Substance and The Room Next Door in El Gouna and Cairo, which are unlikely to get past censors for a general release, with the latter title challenging local beliefs against euthanasia in largely Muslim Egypt.
Khoury also expressed satisfaction with the second edition of CineGouna EMERGE, aimed at budding cinema professionals, and comprising Rising Stars, showcasing 10 promising MENA filmmakers; Mini-CineGouna, aimed at film students; and the Perspectives Program, supporting young photographers, film critics and media professionals.
“We have 150 youngsters from all over Egypt. The idea is to immerse them in every aspect of the festival, they soon learn it’s about work rather than cocktails and parties,” Khoury says, adding that she would love to introducer
The initiative is part of the larger CineGouna industry offering featuring a project market meting out awards worth $400,000 in cash and in-kind services, with prize-winners including Lama Jamjoon’s Remind Me To Forget, Mohammed Almughanni’s Son of the Streets and Jad Chahine’s The Masters of Magic and Beauty, as well as a program of industry panels and masterclasses.
El Gouna was the first film festival to take place in the MENA region since Israel intensified its military operations in southern Lebanon and Beirut in September against Hezbollah, in response to missile strikes on northern Israel, which began the day after the the October 7 Hamas attacks.
With producers and filmmakers from both Lebanon and Palestine in attendance, the impact of the conflicts in both territories, inevitably made it ways into the industry discussions, with other territories like Jordan also impacted by the conflict.
One of the most outspoken speakers was award-winning Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad (Omar, The Idol) who told a masterclass that he was disappointed by the response of Western leaders to the situation in Gaza.
“The masks have fallen, and a new world order must be created that is different from the current order that dominates the world,” he said.
On the other hand, the emerging talents selected as the CInegouna Emerge Rising Stars requested their panel focus on their cinematic achievements rather that what it means to be a filmmaker from a country hit by conflict, although inevitably questions from the floor veered in that direction.
Anger at the situation in Gaza, also coincides with a growing desire among MENA film professionals to move away from a reliance on funding out of Europe and the U.S., where cinema industries are also under pressure.
On the fringes of the festival, Marco Orsini, former founding president of the International Emerging Film Talent Association (IEFTA), spearheaded a dinner gathering more than 20 film financiers and fund heads from across the Middle East and Africa to brainstorm on new financial models based on south-south cooperation.
“Hollywood is dead. The strikes, the streaming platforms, a perfect storm has impacted Hollywood… which in turn has hollowed out the idea of storytelling but there is still interest in creating great films and everyone I meet here, who is engaged in cinema, wants that too,” Orsini told Deadline.
Chatting to Deadline, separately about his recent producing adventures, Lebanese producer George Schoucair revealed how he had raised the budget for upcoming ghost story feature In This Darkness by Nadim Tabet out of the Middle East.
“Before the only place you could find some money was in Europe, but it was imposing certain types of stories and it wasn’t easy,” he explained. “Today, I was able to shoot without a penny out of Europe.”
Schoucair says events like El Gouna’s CineGouna project market have become key to getting independent MENA films off the ground.
In This Darkness has been bankrolled with a patchwork of finance including a MG from Cairo-based Film Clinic Distribution as well monies from a Cairo Film Connection Development Prize, the Doha Film Institute’s Production Fund, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund Production Grant, and an MG from Cairo-based MAD Solutions for international sales rights and Final Cut in Venice prize money.
“These festivals and prizes are increasingly important,” says Schoucair, with his trip yielding a $10,000 cash grant from Dubai-based company Rise Studios, which will go into post-production.
El Gouna may well re-embrace Hollywood stars in future editions, but for now the MENA film industry it supports appears to be increasingly looking East rather than West.
El Gouna 2024 Winners
Narrative Film Competition
Golden Star for Best Narrative Film
Ghost Trail (Fr, Ger, Bel)
Dir. directed
Silver Star for Narrative Film
The Kingdom (Fr)
Dir. Julien Colona
Bronze Star for Narrative Film
Girls Will Be Girls (India, Fr, Nor, U.S.)
Dir. Shuchi Talati
Best Arab Narrative Film: Jointly awarded to:
Thank You for Banking with Us! (Pal, Ger, Saudi Arabia, Qat, Egy)
Dir. Laila Abass
Who Do I Belong To (Tun, Fr, Can)
Dir. Meryam Joobeur
Best Actor: Adam Bessa in Ghost Trail (Fr, Ger, Bel)
Best Actress: Laura Wismar in Salve Maria (Sp)
Special Mention: Charles Peccia Galletto for My Everything (France) and actresses Kani Kusruti and Preeti Panigrahi in Girls Will Be Girls
Documentary Film Competition
Golden Star for Best Documentary Film
We Are Inside (Leb, Qat, Den)
Dir. Farah Kassem
Silver Star for Documentary Film
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat (Bel, Fr, Neth)
Dir. by Johan Grimonprez
Bronze Star for Documentary Film
A New Kind of Wilderness (Nor)
Dir. Silje Evensmo Jacobsen
Best Arab Documentary Film: Jointly awarded:
The Brink of Dreams (Egt, Fr Den, Qat, Saudi Arabia)
Dir.Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir
My Memory is Full of Ghosts (Syria)
Dir. Anas Zawahri
Short Film Competition
Golden Star for Best Short Film
Upshot (Pal, It, Fr)
Dir. Maha Haj
Golden Star for Best Documentary Film
We Are Inside (Leb, Qat, Den)
Dir. Farah Kassem
Silver Star for Short Film: Jointly awarded to:
How We Got Mother Back (Portugal)
Dir. Goncalo Waddington
An Orange from Jaffa (Palestine, Poland)
Dir. Mohammed Almughanni
Bronze Star for Short Film
Ebb & Flow (Leb, Qat, U.S.)
Dir. Nay Tabbara
Best Arab Short Film
A Promise to the Sea (Egypt, Sweden)
Dir. Hend Sohail
Special Mention: Dawn Every Day (Egypt) Dir. Amir Youssef, Voiceless (Switzerland) dir. Samuel Patthey