But if there is a palm of honor that I keep, in a corner of my heart, it was the one that was given in 1997 to Youssef Chahine, on the occasion of the festival’s 50th anniversary. I was not there. I only knew it through images and videos. And yet, I know that this moment would have upset me. Because Youssef Chahine has always been a guardian figure for me. Because his cinema formed me, nourished, awake. And because that evening, dressed in his white costume, tears in his eyes, the trembling voice, he received this award as a late triumph, but brilliant, of a giant course.
In a few days, the Croisette will ignite again in the spotlight for the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. World cinema, in all its diversity, will celebrate its most beautiful stories, its most powerful looks, its most daring forms. And as every year, in the middle of projections, selections and climbing of the steps, Cannes will take the time of a tribute. In 2024, it was to Robert de Niro that he returned – immense actor, a mythical figure of the New Hollywood, traveling companion of Martin Scorsese, and double winner of the Palme d’Or with Driver taxi And Assignment. A deserved tribute, of course.
But if there is a palm of honor that I keep, in a corner of my heart, it was the one that was given in 1997 to Youssef Chahine, on the occasion of the festival’s 50th anniversary. I was not there. I only knew it through images and videos. And yet, I know that this moment would have upset me. Because Youssef Chahine has always been a guardian figure for me. Because his cinema formed me, nourished, awake. And because that evening, dressed in his white costume, tears in his eyes, the trembling voice, he received this award as a late triumph, but brilliant, of a giant course.
Video: INA – Prize for the 50th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival in Youssef Chahine
This palm, called “50th anniversary”, was an exceptional prize, given to one of the greatest filmmakers who accompanied the history of the festival. And the choice of Youssef Chahine said a lot. Cannes thus recognized a free, vibrant, deeply political work. A cinema that sang love, justice, memory and freedom. That evening, by receiving her trophy, Chahine said: ” Put yourself in my place. My heart is beating, I have butterflies in my stomach. I’ve been waiting for this for 47 years. »»
There was then a long standing ovation. Cannes rose to celebrate a master. An artist whose films had crossed the decades, the borders and the eras, and whose voice had never weakened. He was then 71 years old. He had shown his first film in Cannes in 1951, with The son of the Nile. And he had to wait almost half a century to receive this recognition. He didn’t need it, maybe. But the Cannes Festival, it needed to pay tribute to it.
Youssef Chahine is the child of Alexandria, the filmmaker of crosses. At the crossroads of cultures, languages, religions, continents. He filmed Egypt with passion, sometimes with anger, always with pride. He filmed the excluded, the lovers, the oppressed. He filmed dance, bodies, cries, silences. In Cannes, he came several times: The son of the Nile (1951), The earth (1970), Farewell Bonaparte (1985), The emigrant (1994), Fate (1997), and still others. He was not alone. He came, sometimes, accompanied by the older ones. Omar Sharif, for example, that he had discovered when the young man was still only an unknown, and to whom he had offered his very first role in Heaven (Siraa Fil-Wadi1954), a film selected precisely at the Cannes Film Festival. A first step towards the summits, for the two men.
Cannes was also, for Youssef Chahine, a space of commitment. In 1983, he signed there as a member of the jury, alongside Ingrid Bergman, Stanley Donen, and other major figures of world cinema. So he knew all the inner workings, all the requirements, all the tensions. Cannes was, for him, a place of listening, a world scene, a space of confrontation – artistic and political. He came there with his fights, his visions, his dazzling.
Among his films, if there is one that touches me more than all the others, it is Fate. Perhaps because it arrived at a time when the world sank in the shadows, when religious fundamentalism threatened free thought. Perhaps also because it is one of the most beautiful pleas for intellectual freedom ever brought to the screen. By telling the life of the Andalusian Philosopher Averroès, Chahine builds a flamboyant film, mixing music, dance, tragedy, and utopia. He recalls this sentence that has become immortal:
“” Ideas have wings. No one can stop their flight. »»
It is also this work that the Cannes Film Festival rewarded in 1997. A film shot to the future, but rooted in a universal memory. An Arab film, fully. A humanist film, furiously. And a film film, in the noblest sense of the word.
That evening, in Cannes, Youssef Chahine was not just honored: he embodied the very soul of the festival. That of an artist who has never stopped fighting to tell, to resist, to dance. He represented this singular voice that Cannes knew, sometimes late, welcome, carry, celebrate.
Today, while we are preparing to open a new page of the festival, I think of him. To his lively silhouette, to her ironic gaze, to her sublime anger. I think of his films, which have lost none of their urgency. And I think of this palm, which I have not seen live, but which continues to move me, almost thirty years later.
I would have liked to be there. I would have liked to applaud, cry, get up, as so many others did that evening. I would have liked to say thank you. So I do it today. Thank you, Youssef Chahine. Thanks for FateFor Alexandria why?For The earthFor Central stationfor everything you have brought to the screen. Your cinema still lives. And my admiration never weakens.
Neïla Driss
