El Gouna Film Festival (GFF)’s third round will kick off at 6 pm on September 19 and run until September 27 in El Gouna’s Marina Theater, witnessing the participation of stars and filmmakers from various countries, said the festival’s administration.
GFF will give the festival’s creative achievement prize to the Palestinian director and producer Mai al-Masri and will commemorate the Egyptian-Canadian actor Mena Massoud.
The Egyptian singer Abu will perform a song during the ceremony, followed by the showing of the opening film “Ad Astra” starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler and Donald Sutherland and directed by James Gray.
A large number of movie stars will attend the ceremony, including Yousra, Hend Sabry, Mohamed Ramadan, Kinda Alloush, Amr Youssef, Dora, Laila Elwy, Elham Shahen, Nelly Karim, Marwan Hamed, Bassel Khayat, Zafer Abdeen, Farid Boughedir.
GFF will show 80 movies, most of which come from prestigious festivals and several of which have won numerous awards, to compete for El Gouna Golden Star Prize for Narrative Film which will award the winner a trophy, a certificate and US$50,000.
CineGouna Bridge will present a round-table on the voices of refugees at 12:30 pm on Sunday. The platform will also present workshops, master classes and special panel discussions with experts and key players in the film industry, covering a wide range of subjects including the nature of the boundaries between feature films and documentaries, the impact of film festivals on the global cinematic landscape and the restoration and preservation of independent films.
GFF will show the winner of the Palme d’Or from the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean “Parasite” (2019). Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Brazilian “Bacurau” (2019) and Ladj Ly’s French “Les Misérables” (2019), the joint winners of the Jury Prize at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, will also be shown, as will Larisa Sadilova’s Russian “Once in Trubchevsk” (2019), which was part of the Un Certain Regard section of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. Pedro Almodóvar’s latest Spanish film “Pain and Glory” (2019) starring Antonio Banderas, who was awarded Best Actor at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival for the film, will also be shown.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
