OVER 70 Egyptian works will be shown during the 20th Cairo International Film Festival for Children, which will run from March 4 to 13. The festival is one of the most important festivals for children in the world and the only one in the Middle East attracting countries from all over the world to enter their best productions every year. The Egyptian works in the festival are various: short films, cartoons, animations, documentaries and TV programmes. The short films include Wak Wak, directed by Hassan Abdel-Ghani, which revolves around a group of children who play in the fields and watch the migrating birds. Another short film, entitled The Great Instinct, directed by Kazem Hemida, was shot by digital camera. The third short film, El-Azef Ala el-Ahgar (Playing Music on the Rocks) directed by Ashraf Nasr Abdel-Salam and lasting 15 minutes, is about a child from Luxor who lives in an old village then moves to a new one. It deals with how the move affects the boy. Ahlam wa Soliman is another one of the short films that tells the story of Ahlam, a young girl who lives in a humble alley with her mother and takes care of an old man called Am Soleiman. The films, participating in the upcoming festival, deal with many issues made easy for children to understand, like the cartoon Metro, directed by Badr Eddin Seba'e, which deals with people misbehaving on the Tube. There is also Wahawi ya Wahawi, the story of a boy who is all alone on the first night of the holy fasting month of Ramadan and wants to make a fanous (lantern) from wood. In the end, some children help him to buy a new fanous. The film is directed by Ismail el-Nazer. Sexual harassment and street children are critical issues in this year's festival. The cartoon Mohem Gedan (Very Important), directed by Ahmed Fawzi, is about a girl called Salma and how she avoids sexual harassment in her daily life, while Atfal el-Shaware (Street Children), directed by Khaled Ali Hassan, shows us what life is like for these poor people. An episode in the Egyptian series Basant wa Deiasti, directed by Sameh Moustafa, an episode from the Egyptian programme El- Ra'e el-Sagheer, directed by Waleed Hassan, and episodes form other programmes will also be screened during the festival, which is going to get children from all over the world to sit on the jury. The Cairo Opera House will open its doors to children to attend the opening and the closing ceremony and the films screened in the festival, which will also includes symposiums on the issues of art, culture and health, as they relate to children. There will also be workshops for talented children under the supervision of specialists, with orphans and disabled children being given priority. They will also benefit from the charity market in the Opera House, while the festival will go out to them in villages, libraries and hospitals. The festival has indeed become a great international event for children.
