Osama Kamal attends a film festival that speaks of courage and hope across war-torn Africa Glimpsing the Church of Mar Girgis through the window of the overland Metro train, you know you are at the heart of one of Cairo's oldest districts. The neighbourhood houses some of the city's best preserved Islamic and Coptic shrines, but while it is marked in the guide books as a tourist destination foreign tourists are often outnumbered by local visitors. It is a pilgrimage site, and has been for hundreds of years. I too am on a pilgrimage -- to an art destination, Darb 17 -- 18. The locals immediately point out the direction, familiar as they are with the traffic that events at the Darb seem to generate with its film showings and displays of handcrafted objects. Within minutes I am walking in the gallery, surrounded by pottery and art pieces. Why is it called Darb 17 -- 18? I have to ask, and the answer takes me by surprise. The gallery derives its name from the bread riots of 17 and 18 January 1977. Art is not to be compared with bread riots, but the gallery organisers hope to introduce a similar riotous effect in culture and art. And perhaps they are doing it already, since the organisers of the second Cairo Refugee Film Festival have chosen the space as the venue for their recent event. The festival was held from 17 to 20 June to commemorate World Refugee Day. The film festival was launched through an initiative by humanitarian organisations involved in refugee issues in Egypt, along with lawyers, civil society activists, students and volunteers who shared the same interest. The two Egyptian organisations offered assistance to the event. The Egyptian Foundation for Refugee Rights gave financial help, and the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo helped with the logistics. This year the festival organisers invited the refugees to sell their handicrafts during the event. Six women -- a Palestinian, an Eritrean and four Sudanese -- brought handmade products to the festival, as well as food and beverages from their home countries. A Sudanese woman offered tattoo-style body painting for visitors. Eleven films were shown at the event. These were 10 documentaries and a feature film, A Young Woman. The theme of this year's festival was hope amidst the wreckage of war. The films were produced in the United States, New Zealand, India, Brazil, Switzerland, and Syria. The opening film was War Child. Written and directed by Karim Shrobog, it describes the life of Emmanuel Jal, a rising rap star and former child soldier in Sudan. Jal was born in the village of Tonji in South Sudan and was only three years old when civil war broke out in his country in 1983. Growing up, he saw firsthand the devastation that took two million lives and displaced many more. Jal recalls how his sister was raped in front of his eyes and how he saw unarmed people shot in cold blood. Jal was one of 40,000 child soldiers who played an active part in the conflict. At one point he was evacuated in a boat bound for Ethiopia, but the boat was laden well over its capacity and sank. Dozens drowned, but Jal managed to reach the refugee camp that was his destination. There, on account of his young age, he caught the attention of a camera team making documentaries. Soon afterwards a British aid worker managed to get him into a school in Nairobi where his musical talents blossomed. The film ends on an emotional note with Jal summarising his life in a song. He says that when other children were learning how to read, he was learning how to fight. Jal is now a goodwill ambassador for the international charity group Oxfam and a spokesman for Make Poverty History, a campaign to halt the use of child soldiers. One of his songs features in the sound track of the blockbuster film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The closing film, Pray the Devil back to Hell by Gini Reticker, is also about the quest for peace in a tormented land. It is 2003 and Liberia is in the throes of a civil war pitting its ruthless president, Charles Taylor, against rebel groups. Yet Leymah Gbowee, a social worker, manages to organise Christian and Muslim woman of Monrovia, Liberia, to sing and pray in public places. Like millions of Liberians, Gbowee experienced personal tragedy and saw death and destruction in the streets of Monrovia. She started out by calling on women in her Lutheran church to pray for peace, but it was not long before her call was heeded across creed and ethnic barriers. Women took to the streets with their songs and hymns, and soon Women for Liberia Mass Action for Peace was formed. The women staged daily rallies at the fish market in Monrovia, protesting and singing in the rain and cold and picketing in the heat of summer, raising banners, marching, and calling for peace. Embarrassed by their resolve, Taylor was forced to attend peace talks in Accra, Ghana. When the talks stalled the women staged a sit-in, prompting a resumption of the dialogue that ended in Taylor's resignation. He was replaced by the first-ever woman president in Africa's history, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Visibly absent from this year's event were films from Egypt. However Syrian director Roula Nasrallah brought an Arab perspective to the issue with her film Last Days in Tanaf, the story of some of the thousands of Palestinians who fled Iraq after the American occupation in 2003 and settled in a refugee camp in Tanaf, Syria. Nasrallah's documentary, in which the refugees speak of their hardship and hope, offers a personal insight into a tragedy that is being replicated daily in areas of conflict.
