Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival Heads Vow Rescheduled Edition Will Go Ahead Amid Israel-Gaza Crisis With Some Digital Elements & Toned Down Red Carpet
deadline.comThe co-heads of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, which was rescheduled at the eleventh hour this week due to the Israel-Gaza crisis, have vowed that the event will go ahead in some shape or form.
The festival, unfolding in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of El Gouna, was on the cusp of opening its sixth edition this Friday when the management team announced Tuesday that it was postponing the event to new dates running from October 27 to November 2.
More than 120 cinema talents had been confirmed to attend including Bosnian Quo Vadis, Aida? director Jasmila Zbanic as the main jury president, French director and producer Luc Besson with Dogman, Italian animator Enzo d’Alo with A Greyhound Of A Girl; Indian director Anurag Kashyap with Kennedy, Ukrainian filmmaker Maryna Vroda with Stepne and Sudan’s Mohamed Kordofani with his Best International Feature Film submission Goodbye Julia. “The situation, of course, is not very reassuring at all but the intention here is to have the festival from the 27th in any form,” said incoming artistic director Marianne Khoury. “Yesterday was a very, very hard day but I think this morning there is rethinking about this whole thing where you really have to adapt to situations like this.
We already had this experience with Covid, where you had to reimagine how festivals were done… We were ready to go, all the activities were there and it’s very tough because the context is also much more serious.” The decision to delay the festival came just three days after a deadly attack out of Gaza by Hamas militants on southern Israel in which at least 1,200 Israelis were killed.
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