American Film Diplomacy program to join in El Gouna Festival

CAIRO – 29 August 2017: The U.S. Embassy announced that the premier American film diplomacy program, named ‘American Film Show,’ will participate in El Gouna Film Festival.

The program will perform workshops and training courses, through the participation of two prominent American filmmakers who are the director Richard Tan and the producer and scriptwriter Jeff Stokely. Both Tan and Stokely will participate in the festival by giving workshops to a group of filmmakers, scriptwriters and directors from Egypt, Middle East and North Africa.

The American Film Show is the most prominent film diplomacy program run by the U.S. State Department in collaboration with the Institute of Motion Picture Arts at the University of Southern California. This program promotes direct communication between people, presents contemporary visions of American society and promotes intercultural understanding.

The American Film Show program is expected to partner with CineGouna Bridge which is a platform for the dialogue between the different international cinematic voices, working with ten emerging filmmakers to develop and enhance the content of films as well as promoting movies’ messages.

Emerging Arab and Egyptian filmmakers gear up to participate in the first anticipated edition of El Gouna Film Festival (GFF) that will run between September 22 and September 29 at El Gouna in Hurghada.

The festival which is headed by the Iraqi cinema critic Intishal al-Tamimi will be sponsored by the Egyptian Culture Ministry and Egyptian Tourism Authority. GFF seeks to foster different cinematic voices and generate opportunities to further develop creativity in the Middle Eastern region.

Displaying an array of works from around the globe, the Festival is promoting rising filmmakers and will include three competition categories; Feature Narrative, Feature Documentary, Short Films, ‘Official Out of Competition’ selection, and Special Programs.