Over the years, the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) has paid particular attention to short films due to their growing popularity each year. The previous editions of the festival included projections in the Ewart room at AUC, which can accommodate 900 people for short films, which were all complete.
It should be noted that the winning short film is now qualified for the Lists of Oscars, attracting filmmakers from around the world to submit their films in order to have the chance to present their first world or international during the festival.
For its 45th edition, scheduled for November 15 to 24, the CIFF remains committed to strengthening the short film industry with several new additions to the short films program.
The first of these improvements involves a partnership between the festival and the Drosos Foundation in Egypt. This partnership resulted in the introduction of a cash price of $ 5,000 for the best Arab short film. The Drosos Foundation, which focuses on support for the creative economy and the empowerment of young artists to access more opportunities and advance their career in cinema, has teamed up with the festival to award this prize. The winner of this prize will be selected by the short film jury among the Arab participants in the official short films.
Aware of the importance of short films and the need to give them an equal place to the feature films, the festival has chosen to inaugurate an opening ceremony dedicated to short films, in the presence of participating filmmakers, members of the jury and the public. This ceremony will take place at the Grand Théâtre and will present a selection of short films that will also serve as a program opening films. Among these is the Egyptian film I promise you paradiseproduced by Morad Mustafa, who won numerous prizes at international film festivals, including the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
Due to the constraint of geographic diversity of the competition and the growing number of submissions of Egyptian short films, the festival management introduced a new non -competitive section, which aims to offer more projection opportunities to young promising Egyptian filmmakers, highlighting their distinctive artistic companies at the start of their career.
Commenting on these developments, thehe President of CIFF, Hussein Fahmysaid: ” During its previous edition, the festival managed to present performances and diversified films to the public, which led to high attendance rates. The projected films addressed several crucial themes that the public appreciated“.
Fahmy added: ” This year, the festival offers young Egyptian filmmakers the opportunity to participate in its events thanks to a non -competitive section. This section aims to give them the opportunity to participate in the festival, in order to open their way to express their creativity“.
CIFF director, Amir Ramses, said: “Over the years spent, the short films program has been truly unique. From this year, winning films will have the opportunity to participate in the selections for the Oscars of the best short film, which the festival management is extremely proud. In recent years, we have noticed the public’s interest in this type of films, which is why we had planned to organize evenings on the red carpet for them, while presenting projections in a larger space – the Ewart room, at AUC – which can accommodate 900 spectators. Nevertheless, the crowds remained high. »»
Amir Ramses added: ” This year, in coordination with the director of the short films program, Maggie Morgan, we decided to launch an official opening of the competition for the first time and to project certain films to the Grand Théâtre, to the Cairo Opera. In addition, the festival has decided to introduce a non -competitive program to enhance the Egyptian short films. This program is dedicated to young people and student films, in order to present them to the public and the filmmakers to prepare a new generation“.
CIFF is one of the most prestigious and oldest festivals in the Arab world and Africa. It is unique because it is the only festival in the Arab and African region accredited in category “A” by the International Federation of Film Producers (FIAPF) in France.
Press release.
