Egyptian artists and intellectuals protested outside Cairo's French Centre for Culture for screening a film directed by an Israeli national in a festival, which started on Friday. The film festival ‘Recontres de l'image' is due to run until next Thursday. A group of Egyptian directors earlier released a statement about their decision to boycott the festival as Egypt's National Centre for Cinema withdrew all Egyptian films from the fest. Among those who protested on Thursday were Helmi Shaarawi, the head of the Arab and African Research Centre, activist Amin Iskandar and directors Tawfiq Saleh and Ahmed Atef. Atef and actor Asser Yassin, as well as director Kamla Abou Zekri, quit their places on the festival panel because of the Israeli film. In a statement regarding leaving the panel, Atef said yesterday, "I respect France's freedom to choose the films participating in a festival it organises, but I quit because, as much as I respect their rights, I also have the right to take the position I decide." Egyptian intellectuals rejected in a statement two days ago the French Foreign Ministry decision to screen the film after the culture centre's previous decision to remove it. "We (condemn) the French Foreign Ministry's blatant intervention and unacceptable pressure on the management of the festival, which is held by the French Cultural Centre to force it to show the film ‘Almost normal' by Israeli director Karen Ben-Rafael in the festival. We consider it to be a special festival of independent Egyptian movies," the statement read. One of the directors, Khaled Youssef, remarked, "It would have been better for the National Cinema Centre... to announce immediately the establishment of a special film festival for Egyptian young people" to be held concurrently with the French festival. Bernard Kouchner, France's Foreign Minister, said he regretted the "withdrawal of Egyptian films and members of the arbitration panel of the festival". The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said the comment came as a surprise to them. France has been critical of Egypt's position but as of last week, the French Embassy in Cairo had not released any statement about the Egyptian pullout.
