Mohamed El-Assyouti previews the offerings of the Cairo International Film Festival, which opens on Tuesday The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) marks its 30th anniversary this session (28 November-8 December 2006) and by way of celebration is introducing two new international competitions, one for digitally shot feature films, the other for Arab films, the latter prize following the Dubai Film Festival's recent instigation of a similar competition. In addition, the arrival of businessman Naguib Sawiris and his company Orascom as sponsors has provided the festival with an extra LE6 million, more than doubling the Ministry of Culture's allocation of LE5 million. This year, though, it seems the festival will provide as much controversy as films. The minister of culture is currently facing a great deal of criticism in the press for having made negative comments about the veiling of women, so his presence as head of the supreme committee of the festival is unlikely to pass without comment. The minister has appointed Omar Sharif as honorary president and actor Ezzat Abu Auf as president. The latter has made clear that the festival continues a policy of boycotting Israel and in press conferences pointed out that the festival contains no Danish productions. The cartoon controversy still, clearly, rankles. In the past Danish cinema -- films by Lars Von Trier and the Dogma 95 productions -- have been the subject of special focus at the festival. The festival has also rejected a number of other films to avoid controversy, though one of the event's 14 sections this year is called "Controversial Films". It will feature three screenings, excluding the British production Burning Light directed by Marc Ellegaard, which tells of a Spanish journalist who gets embroiled with international terrorism and falls in love with an Egyptian suicide bomber who kills an Israeli politician. This the censorship did not pass. The relationship of Arabs and Muslims with the rest of the world is the subject of several films scheduled to be shown. Roberto Benigni's La tigre e la neve (The Tiger and the Snow, 2005) tells of Italian poet Attilo De Giovanni who goes to Baghdad during the American-British invasion of 2003 to help Vittoria, the woman he loves, who has been wounded in one of the air raids. She, in turn, is in Iraq in the company of an Iraqi poet, Fuad, on whose biography she is working. The Spanish film Tirante el Blanco (Tirant Lo Blanch -- The Maidens' Conspiracy, 2006) by veteran director Vicente Aranda is based on a 15th-century book by Joanot Martorell, one of Cervantes favourite authors. The film depicts the warrior Tirante, commissioned by the Byzantine emperor to help save Constantinople from the besieging Ottomans; winning on the battlefield, he eventually has to compete with the Grand Sultan Mohamed IV for the heart of the Byzantine emperor's daughter, Princess Carmesina. Two other Spanish films, El próximo oriente (The Near East, 2006) by Fernando Colombo -- in which two brothers, Abel and Ca�n, compete for the love of Aisha, a Muslim Bangladeshi girl, and Raval, Raval (2006) by Antoni Verdaguer, in which one protagonist converts to Islam despite his family's objections after falling in love with a Moroccan woman and another, college student Luc�a, falls in love with Ali, an illegal immigrant, tread similar ground. Relationships crossing religious borders are also the subject of the Canadian film Sabah (2005) by Ruba Nadda, and the Iranian film Ezdevaj Be Sabke Irani (Marriage, Iranian Style, 2005) by Hassan Fathi. East meets West in other films, too. In Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, a famous Pakistani singer lives in Manhattan by selling coffee and doughnuts, while the American film Driving to Zigzigland (2006) by Nicole Ballivian follows the travails of a Palestinian actor who works as a taxi driver in Los Angeles but dreams of becoming an actor in Hollywood. The US-Canadian Civic Duty (2006), directed by Jeff Renfroe, is about a Muslim student (played by Egyptian actor Khaled Abul-Naga) who becomes a source of fear for his paranoid neighbour, an avid viewer of cable news networks and obsessed with terrorist threats. Rashid Masharawi's Intizar (Waiting, Palestine, France, Morocco, 2005) follows a Palestinian director who goes in search of actors in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, only to realise that his destiny, like theirs, is to wait. The French-Moroccan co- production Indigèns (literally natives though its English title is Days of Glory and its Arabic Al-Baladiyoun ), directed by Rachid Boucharb, follows the French First Army, a majority of whose soldiers are North African Arabs, as they help with World War II liberation of France. The film was screened at the Cannes and Carthage Film Festivals. Farida Benlyazid's Juanita bint Tanga (The Wretched Life of Juainita Narboni, 2005), another French-Moroccan co- production, focuses on the experience of Juanita, daughter of an English father from Gibraltar and an Andalusian mother, who lives in Tangiers during the last years of its colonisation and witnesses growing cultural and political upheavals. The position of women in contemporary Muslim society is the subject of two films: the Tunis-Moroccan Khoshkhash (Flower of Oblivion, 2005), by Selma Baccar, which deals with the notion of female sexuality in a way that has raised some conservative eye-brows; and the Algerian-French Barakat, by Djamila Sahraoui, in which two women disguise themselves and enter the underworld of Islamic terrorism. From Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, comes Nia Dinata's Berbagi Suami (Love for Share, 2006) which depicts the problems women face in societies where polygamy is allowed. Of the aforementioned films only Raval, Raval and Civic duty are among the 18 in the international competition. The international jury consists of Argentinean screenwriter, producer, director Luis Puenzo; Hungarian film professor Miklós Szinetàr, French screenwriter Gilles Taurand, Italian producer Enzo Porcelli, Indian producers Rama Naidu and Manmohan Shetty, Indian actor Saumitra Chatterjee, Lebanese director Assad Fouladkar; Russian actress Elena Zakharova, Italian-based American film critic Deborah Young, Egyptian actor Khaled El-Nabawi and director Kamla Abu Zekri. The digital competition jury is headed by Egyptian director Dawoud Abdel-Sayed, and the Arab competition jury by veteran Syrian actor Dureid Lahham. This year the festival will also present a special showcase of Latin American films, including the opening film, 2 Filhos de Francisco -- A história de Zezé di Camargo & Luciano (Two Sons of Francesco, 2005), a biopic based on two successful Brazilian singers. Four films from Latin America are in international competition. The festival will also re-screen two Mexican films, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, 1993), by Arturo Ripstein, and El Callejón de los milagros (Midaq Alley, 1994) by Jorge Fons, both based on the Naguib Mahfouz novels, in tribute to the late writer. Five Egyptian films are included in the festival, three competing in both the international competition and in the Arab competition; Khaled El-Haggar's Mafish Gheir Kida (None but That), a musical based on Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins starring Nabila Ebeid; Hala Khalil's Qas wi Lazq (Cut and Paste) and Imad El-Bahhat's debut Istughumaiya (Hide and Seek). In addition Amir Ramses's debut Akhir Al-Duniya (The End of the World) and Ibrahim El-Batout's debut Ithaki (2005) will compete in the Arab and Digital competitions respectively. The festival this year honours Egyptian actors Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz and Youssra, cinematographer Said Shimi and composer Omar Khairyat. Jacqueline Bisset and Danny Glover have been invited as honorary guests.
