Only 3 weeks only to wait and will start the second edition of the Gabès Arabic Film Festival (FIFAG) which will take place from September 24 to 30, 2016.
The preparations are going well and Dorra Bouchoucha is already on site, in Gabès, to “coach” the teams of volunteers.
The festival organizing committee will announce the titles of the films in competition, the names of all the participants and guests, of the members of the two juries and all the other surprises that this event has in store for us during two press conferences scheduled one on September 10 in Gabès and the other on September 14 in Tunis.
Two films titles have already been revealed:
– The Palestinian film “Degraded” Tarzon and Arab Nasser brothers will be projected during the festival opening evening. “Degraded” had been selected in official competition at JCC 2015 And had been appointed in five different sections of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
– The short film “Hawiya, ID” by Saudi director Hanaa Saleh Alfassi.
The festival opening evening will take place in Jarra. The singer Zohra Lajnaf will give a concert before the screening of the film.
This young festival, whose honorary president is the Tunisian international star Hend Sabry will receive some prestigious guests, including the Egyptian actor Khaled Abol NagaSyrian actress Kinda Allouch and Egyptian director Ahmed Rashwan.
On the sidelines of cinema activities, the organizing committee has concocted a very interesting cultural program which will be unveiled soon.
Tributes will also be returned during this second edition of the festival, one of which to the Egyptian director Mohamed Khan Died in July 2016.
One might be surprised that such a festival is held in Gabès, while this city does not even have a cinema. Isn’t that curious?
According to Mahmoud Jemni, president of the festival, it is precisely time to train moviegoers in this region of Gabès by promoting and consolidating cinematographic culture and making people know to the public and more particularly to young people, national cinema and Arab cinema. For him, Arab cinema has become very rich, creation has been very diversified and is no longer centered on Egyptian cinema alone. This is largely from young people who keep innovating and inventing their own cinema.
These young people have an incredible creation power he says. And then, he adds, why should everything be done in Tunis? Why should the capital take on all cultural events? Why should she decide for the regions? Why does each region not become a center generating an action itself? You have to work for cultural decentralization. Each region has its own human potential, its ideas, it can therefore have their own actors and cultural activities, Gabès is an example.
This kind of event can encourage people to create, to act, it can attract businessmen who would see an opportunity for investing and a way of helping the regions they are from. And this is how this Gabès festival was able to see the light of day thanks to sponsors, son of this region, such as the Brothers Lassaad and Rafik Kilani and Wided Bouchamaoui, whose material and moral aid is very precious.
Hend Sabry, herself a daughter of the South, as she wanted to recall during the first edition in 2015, worked really and seriously for this festival. She is not content to come and attend just for the protocol, she really invested in it because she thinks that decentralization is good and that FIFA is “a festival that will light up the South”.
Neila Driss
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