The Cairo International Film Festival has opened its official call for submissions. The longest running festival in the Arab world and Africa will accept films to view that wish to participate in the programme, with submissions open until 15th of August.
This year has seen a lot of changes at CIFF including legendary Egyptian actor Hussein Fahmy returning after many years as festival president, and the appointment of Amir Ramses as festival director, after his stint at El Gouna Film Festival. Some see this as a move to glamourize CIFF, which although highly regarded by the film community, had not been drawing the same star power as GFF.
Fahmy stated that the festival, for its 44th edition, seeks to attract diverse films that represents the different cinematic movements and to explore new inspiring experiences from around the world.
Ramses stated that the management has made all the necessary arrangements for the new call for entries on the festival’s website and that the programming work has started in the cooperation with the same team which did such an amazing job in the previous editions of the festival. In fact, the programming team for CIFF remains intact with Andrew Mohsen as programming director, Ossama Abdel Fattah as director of the Critics Week programme, while film director Youssef Hesham is selected to become the director of the short film programme along with his original task as programmer for North and South America. They are also joined, as last year, by critic Rasha Hosny as programmer for Asia and Maggie Morgan for Eastern Europe.
For more information and to submit a film, check out the CIFF website. Then click where it says "Film Submissions" and select either feature or short films.
