LAFF to honour Gamil Rateb and Moussa Toure

CAIRO – 19 December 2017: The President of the Luxor African Film Festival, Sayed Fouad, revealed that the seventh edition of the film festival will honour the veteran Egyptian actor Gamil Rateb and the renowned Senegalese director Moussa Toure.

Rateb was born in Cairo in 1926. He first appeared on screens in 1946 in the film, “I Am the East.” After at least a 20-year hiatus from Egyptian cinema, Rateb later returned to the screens with the film "Al-Kaddab" (The Liar). The iconic actor has also debuted in French and Tunisian cinema. Rateb performed in a lot of distinguished international movies such as “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Trapeze” and “To commit a murder,” among others.

Toure was born in Senegal in 1958. In 1987, he established his production company named “Les Films du Crocodile” that funded a number of important documentaries. Toure released his successful first feature movie in 1991, entitled “Toubab Bi.”
In 2002, he launched Moussa Invite Film Festival which is a showcase for African documentaries. One of his important achievements was directing “La Pirogue” semidocumentary movie in 2012.

The seventh annual Luxor African Film Festival will kick off on March 10, 2018. The poster of the seventh edition of the festival will bear the face of the late African icon Nelson Mandela.

Fouad explained that he chose Mandela because his life's works are a symbol of struggle and contention for one’s homeland and the people who inhabit the African continent and the whole world. The seventh edition of the festival next year coincides with what would have been Mandela's centennial birthday; he was born in July 1918 and died in December 2013.

The poster takes the shape of the Africa continent, which is the festival's top priority. The festival will feature a number of films about the life and struggle of Mandela. The festival poster was originally designed by Ahmed Seyam and use in the third edition of the festival, where it was admired by festival guests at that time.

The LAFF was founded and evaluated by the Youth Artists Foundation under the auspices and support of the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Tourism, Luxor governorate and the Film Syndicate.