Two films to see….
Before yesterday, I started my day with a very beautiful film that I highly recommend. This is the film Divine of the Moroccan Houda Benyamina. This film also won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016: the gold camera and the SACD special mention. A new film on the French, but different suburbs. A nice story, very well interpreted. To have.
Then I saw the Iranian film No Land’s Song by Ayat Najafi. Beautiful documentary film. It is a young woman who has a dream: to organize in Tehran a concert of women soloists, which has been prohibited in Iran since the 1979 Revolution, the voice of women being a 3Awra.
Display of the film No Land’s Song
She will therefore have to overcome all obstacles to have an authorization for such an event. A woman who fights to defend a right which seems obvious to us but who is not under other skies. This film reminded me of another film Football under coverwhich also tells the adventures of an Iranian coach who wanted to organize, in Iran, a fooball match between two women’s teams, one German and the other Iranian. These are two beautiful films that show us how the Iranian people suffer to exercise rights that seem to us to flow from source and natural.
The tribute to Youssef Chahine…
Yesterday, I started my day with the tribute to my favorite filmmaker, a monster of Arab cinema: M. Youssef Chahine. This tribute was presented by Khemais Khayati and the Lebanese Brahim El Ariss.
JCC 2016 – Tribute to Youssef Chahine
Was the former friends, students and actors of Youssef Chahine, including Mahmoud Hemeda, Izzat Alaili, Khaled Nabawy, Yosra El Louzy, Dorra Zarrouk, Khaled Youssef, Gaby Khoury and Jamil Rateb. They told Youssef Chahine, their relationships with him, memories, anecdotes …
It emerges from all these testimonies that Youssef Chahine is a crazy passionate of cinema, that he had a gift that allowed him to merge with his actors and to get the best, that he was perfectionist, and that he “felt” his films in an almost intuitive way. He was so perfectionist that he could spend three months thinking about a simple musical sentence. On the other hand, he thought all the details of his films in advance so much that there were almost no more surprises and that everything was perfectly planned and budgeted.
We also learned that Youssef Chahine frequented young people a lot, liked to listen to them, debate with them … He had remained child himself until the end of his life. He had also helped many of these young people to become actors or filmmakers, such as Khaled Youssef which he had known a student and who subsequently became the great director we know.
Youssef Chahine left his name in the history of cinema. I say cinema and not Arab cinema. And personally, I find that he also knew how to convey his knowledge and passion to his own students like Yousry Nasrallah and Khaled Youssef.
During this tribute, the union of Egyptian filmmakers also wanted to honor Brahim Letaief.
The union of Egyptian filmmakers honors Brahim Letaief
Right after took place the inauguration of a very beautiful photo exhibition dedicated to Youssef Chahine and offered to the JCC by the African Film Luxor Festival. There were so beautiful photos that you would have thought that Youssef Chahine was going to speak!
Youssef Chahine photos exhibition
Inauguration of the photo exhibition of Youssef Chahine
Mahmoud Hemeda, Khaled Youssef and Seif El Dine at the exhibition of photos of Youssef Chahine
Youssef Chahine photos exhibition
Youssef Chahine, actor, in his central station film
Emotion …
In the evening, I went to see the Egyptian documentary film We have never been kids by Mahmood Soliman, award -winning film four times already. For 12 years, the filmmaker followed and filmed a family from popular Cairo districts… moving film.
Today, the event is the release of the Tunisian film Thala my love by Mehdi Hmili. I wish him success.
Good festival!
Neila Driss
Read on the same subject:
