The Franco-Arab Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary!

More than just a film festival

 

Arab film festivals abound, for our great pleasure, all over Europe and the Middle East. Kawa News already gave you a hint about the return of the El Gouna festival, in Egypt, whose star-studded line-up dazzled the red carpet. This time, it is a completely different kind of festival that will take place from November 12 to 23 in Noisy-le-Sec. 

 

 

Indeed, the particularity of the FFA is that it does not only aim to exhibit films and to introduce new filmmaking talents. On the one hand, the festival wants to show the “multiplicity” of the Arab world: its peoples, trajectories, life paths, cultures so diverse and particular.

On the other hand, it aims to show the links between France and the Arab world, beyond the political tensions that often spoil this special relationship. According to the organizers, the FFA wants to show “the close ties between the Arab world and France, and encourage exchanges and dialogue between cultures.” 

 

A rich and elaborate program 

 

This year, the FFA has an exceptional sponsor: the director Costa Gavras, whose films have been awarded several times by the Oscars, the Cesars, the Cannes Film Festival, among other prestigious ceremonies. 

“Sponsoring the Franco-Arab Film Festival of Noisy-le-Sec is to give it my support, as a filmmaker and as a citizen. The Arab world, this plural and diverse entity, needs to show us its images, far from prejudices and stereotyped media visions”, he declared.

The festival will also be sponsored by the director Lina Soualem, son of actor Zinedine Soualem, whose film “Their Algeria” is currently in theaters (and that we wrote about last week).

 

 

Of the 29 films to be shown, six were presented at the Cannes 2021 Festival, including Feathers, by Egyptian director Omar El-Zohairy, which won the Grand Prix at the International Critics’ Week. 

In addition to the traditional exchanges between directors and audiences after the screening of films, the festival also offers a short-film competition, as well as musical and artistic events on the sidelines of the screenings. 

Special mention for the screening of Azur et Asmar, a beautiful animated film by Michel Ocelot about two princes from the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, which will also be on the program of this promising 10th edition!