This year the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) opens with the Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin's The Cut (2014) a World War I film set in 1915. It tells the story of and the Armenian genocide through the experience of a blacksmith, Nazaret Manoogian (Tahar Rahim), who lives in Mardin in southeast Turkey with his wife Rakel (Hindi Zahra) and their twin daughters Arsinée and Lucinée (Zein and Dina Fakhoury). Nazaret survives the genocide after being chained to fellow Armenians taken to a valley to be executed by sword and knife to save bullets, a process during which he suffers a life-threatening cut to the neck that takes away his voice. Eventually he finds out that his twin duaghters are alive and begins the long search for them, from Syria and Lebanon and from Florida to Minneapolis to the barren and desolate prairies of North Dakota. The Cutstars Tahar Rahim, whose brilliant debut with Jacques Audiard, Un prophéte (A Prophet) earned him the accolades of Best Actor and Most Promising Actor at César Awards in 2010 as well as that of Best Actor at the European Film Awards in 2009. He was Born in Belfort, France in 1981. More recently he starred in Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle (2011) as a young Roman soldier and in Jean-Jacques Annaud's Days of the Falcon (also in 2011), acting opposite Antonio Banderas and Mark Strong. His last film before The Cut was Asghar Farhadi'sLe Passé (The Past, 2013), his next film isSamba, directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. Fatih Akinwas in born Germany in 1973 to Turkish immigrant parents, and made his name with Head-On, which won the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI award at the 2004 Berlinale. His film The Edge of Heaven received the Best Screenplay award and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Festival as well as hogging four of the 2007 Ankara International Film Festival's awards: Editing, Screenplay, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress. Akin's comedy Soul Kitchen (2009) received the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival. More recently, he made a feature documentary, Polluting Paradise (2012), about environmental damage in the Turkish countryside. He describes The Cut as the last in a trilogy about love, death and the devil, following Head-On and The Edge of Heaven. As part of its Greek guest-of-honour presentation, CIFF will close with the Greek filmmaker Pantelis Voulgaris's Little England, featuring Penelope Tsilika, Sofia Kokkali, Anneza Papadopoulou and Andreas Konstantinou. “Little England” is a reference to the Greek island of Andros — part of the Cyclades Islands, which are rich in history, beauty, culture and architecture — where the film is set in the 1930s and 1940s. Andros's nickname originates in its accomplishments in the shipping industry, in which it was said to compete with British shipping a the time. The film is a family saga that unfolds over decades, in which the Saltafero sisters live out a whole epoch with their parents, husbands and children, a story peppered by the two women's love for the same man. Also by Voulgaris, featuring Zorz Sarri, Giorgos Moshidis, Stavros Kalaroglou, Nikos Bousdoukos and Costa Fyssoun, is Happy Day (1976), the director's record of life under a military junta, showing how the life of a group of political exiles on a small island has been marred by interrogation, psychological and physical violence. Born in 1940, Pantelis Voulgaris studied at the Stavrakou Film School and went on to become one of the leading Greek filmmakers of his generation. His debut feature Anna's Engagement received the FIPRESCI Prize and a Special Mention at the Berlinale in 1974. He spent six months in exile towards the end of the Regime of the Colonels in 1973. His best-known works includeThe Great Love Songs (1973), a documentary about the Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis, Stone Years (1985), which received the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and Quiet Days in August (1992), which received a Special Mention at the Berlinale. Most recently his film Brides (2004) won the Greek Competition Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Another classic highlight to watch out for is the German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff's Baal (1969), starring Sigi Graue, Margarethe von Trotta, Hanna Schygulla and — surprise, indeed! — Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The film transposes Bertolt Brecht's expressionist work into a later time, focusing on the life of Baal, a poet and anarchist who lives in an attic and reads his poems to taxi drivers. It is a powerful statement on rebelliousness and the cult of genius, questioning sexual mores and social oppression. Fassbinder plays both Baal and himself. Throughout he is surrounded by actors who were later to perform in his own films. After the film screening on West German television, Brecht's widow Helene Weigel had it banned, arguing that the social circumstances engendering Baal's rebelliousness had not been adequately explained. Volker Schlöndorffwas born on 31 March, 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany. He studied economics and political science before joining the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique in Paris. Schlöndorff worked as an assistant to Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais. Among the highlights to look forward to in this year's CIFF is the late and great Alain Resnais's Life of Riley (2014), an adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's eponymous play. Set in Yorkshire, England, it stars Sabine Azéma, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Sihol, Michel Vuillermoz, Sandrine Kiberlain and André Dussollier as elderly thespians dealing with a tragedy at the centre of their lives. George Riley's fatal illness prompts his friends to invite him join their amateur theatre troupe, and while rehearsals proceed, a long buried history of interwoven and complex relations begins to surface. The film won the FIPRESCI and the Alfred Bauer Award at Berlinale. Alain Resnais, who died in March this year, is perhaps best known for Hiroshima mon amour (1959), though his documentary Night and Fog (1955) is a close contender. Resnais won over 50 awards at the Cannes Festival, the Berlinale, the Locarno International Film Festival and the European Film Awards. The Palestinian filmmaker Najwa Najjar's Eyes of a Thief, an official competition entry, is notable for featuring the Algerian singer Soad Massi in her first cinematic appearance. It also features the Egyptian actor Khaled Abul-Naga as well as Nesrin Faour, Maisa Abd Elhadi, Areen Omran and Suhail Haddad. The story of the Muslim Palestinian Tarek (Abul-Naga), who escapes from the Israeli army with the help of nuns during the 2002 intifada, it is also a deep look at Palestinian society over the last decade. Tarek ends up being arrested and stays in prison for ten years, but on his return to the West Bank he is shocked by the extent of change that has taken place. Najwa Najjar's debut feature Pomegranates and Myrrh (2009) won the Golden Dagger for Best Cinematography at Muscat Film Festival in Oman and the Best Arab Film award at Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Also starring Khaled Abul-Naga, together with Maged El-Kedwany, Horeya Farghalli and Menha El-Batrawi, the young Egyptian filmmaker Ahmed Abdallah's fourth full-length feature, Dècor, is a psychological thriller that offers an exciting opportunity to see what the youngest generation of Egyptian filmmakers are doing. Maha and her husband Sherif are set designers working for the first time on a commercial film in Cairo. One day on the film set, Maha turns around and the entire cast and crew have disappeared. Finding herself in a real apartment in entirely different clothes, she runs to the street in a panic — only to realise she is now in Alexandria. Ahmad Abdalla, a graduate of the Faculty of Music Education, Helwan University, has worked as an editor since 2003. His films have earned him the Golden Tulip at the Istanbul International Film Festival, the Tanit d'or at Journées cinématographiques de Carthage, the Griot Best Film award at the African Film Festival of Tarifa, the Best Arab Film award at the Cairo International Film Festival, the Golden Antigone at the 35th Cinemed.
