The Cairo Film Festival’s Cairo Film Connection co-production platform concluded with a spectacular award ceremony on Saturday 4 December, with Egyptian first-timer Adhan El-Sherif’s “Ravens of the City” and French-Egyptian filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh’s “Life After Siham” standing out among the many winners.
“Ravens of the City” is a gritty drama in development about a reckless hustler named Gharib who desperately needs money to enter a streetcar race and falls prey to a moneylender, won four awards totalling $60,000 in cash. “Ravens of the City,” produced by Sudanese Mohammed Alomda (“You Will Die at Twenty”), will receive consultation from Film Independent, a US non-profit that collaborates with Cairo.
“Life After Siham” is about a French film director conducting a filmmaking workshop in Egypt, which turns into a method for him to confront the trauma of his mother’s death, reflecting director Messeeh’s bi-cultural background. “Siham,” a film co-produced by Camille Laemle of France and Ali El Araby of Egypt, won three accolades, including a $50,000 minimum guarantee for distribution in the Arab world through Mad Solutions.
Other Cairo Film Connection highlights include Egyptian director Sara Shazli’s (“Back Home”) coming-of-age drama “Nour,” involving a close friendship between two teenage girls that becomes toxic, and Brooklyn-based Egyptian director Farida Zahran’s Cairo-set comedy “The Leftover Ladies,” about a 63-year-old woman who tries to leave her polygamist husband.
Some of the prizes at Cairo Film Connection, which is run by Chadi Zeneddine, a former Doha Film Institute programmer, are decided by the sponsors – who helped contribute more than $300,000 – while others are determined by a jury consisting of Lebanon’s Hania Mroueh of Metropolis Cinema in Beirut, France’s Alice Karroubi, programming director of the Cannes market, and Egyptian director Sherif El-Bandary.
