Lifestyle
5.12.2023
The young Egyptian director who has already been awarded at the Cannes Film Festival
Egyptian director Haya Khairat could be about to experience a turning point in her young career, as she will be honoured with the Pierre Angénieux Encouragement Award, which rewards “image experts”, for her film “Safe Kids”, a video that addresses mental health issues.
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Egyptian director Haya Khairat could be about to experience a turning point in her young career, as she will be honoured with the Pierre Angénieux Encouragement Award, which rewards “image experts”, for her film “Safe Kids”, a video that addresses mental health issues.
When the young Egyptian director Haya Khairat received an e-mail from the Cannes Festival organisers one day in February, she could not believe her eyes. She was to receive the Angenieux Special Encouragement Award at the industry’s most prestigious film festival. At the time, she thought it was just spam and didn’t follow up, she told Arab News. But when the team contacted her again via her Instagram account, she was forced to face the facts: her work would be awarded at the next edition of the festival!
“Honestly, at that point, I was overwhelmed by the information. It was scary. I needed to think about it and asked myself, “Why is this happening to me?” But this is going to open a lot of doors for me, I think it’s going to be a turning point in my career.”
A pioneer
Haya Khairat will indeed be the first Arab director to receive the award and will physically travel to Cannes for the first time this month, fulfilling one of her childhood dreams. It’s not just about walking the red carpet,” she says, “but I’m happy to be recognised for what I am. This is a source of pride for the young woman, who was born with a love of images and cinema, and who was inspired both by Arab legends of the silver screen such as Soad Hosny, Mona Zaki and Nadine Labaki and by Oscar-winning directors such as Alfonso Cuarón.
As an official partner of the Cannes Film Festival since 2013, the lens manufacturer Angénieux pays tribute to a great director of photography each year at the Pierre Angénieux Tribute Ceremony, an exceptional evening opened by Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and presented by Pierre Zéni. This event is an opportunity to highlight the image experts from around the world, without whom cinema would not exist.
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