Luxor African Film Festival launches the FACTORY project to support female directors in Africa,Middle East

The Luxor African Film Festival (LAFF) launched a new project entitled FACTORY during its eleventh edition taking place from March 4-10.

The initiative supports female directors from Africa and the Middle East as LAFF administration knows the importance of shedding the lights on them and their roles in creating films in our region (specially documentaries) where they face lot of challenges finalize their first or second film works. 

Therefore, LAFF is supporting 7 to 9  long films, as well as developing, training, and supporting psychologically these young female directors, by benefiting from the experiences of 5 established filmmakers participating in the project in order to enhance a sense of safety and confidence through workshops specially prepared for this project by experts from Africa, Europe and America.

Azza Elhosseiny, LAFF Director, and project founder confirmed that the current edition invited a group of leading women directors in documentary cinema to host discussions, along with film screenings directed by leading African female documentary filmmakers in Africa.

The participating in FACTORY projects were selected by the Festival management and the Factory director, Kawthar Younis, an Egyptian director who studied filmmaking at the Cairo Higher Film Institute.

Her most prominent long documentary debut" A Gift from the Past" was widely praised by critics in various local and international film festivals. Kawthar currently produces and directs, short and long films, in addition TV commercials.

She is one of the founders of the RAWEYAT (SHE-NARRATORS), an initiative that was co-founded by emerging female directors from the Middle East, North Africa and diaspora, that aims of to create a new scene at the level of the region and beyond.

As the initiative grows, their founders will seek the generation spaces for communication. 

LAFF is organized by the Independent Shabab Foundation under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministries of Culture, Tourism and Foreign Affairs, with the National Bank of Egypt and other partners.