‘El Maseer’ to screen at CIFF on Nov.5

CAIRO – 5 November 2018: The Egyptian film “El Maseer” (The Destiny) will screen on November 5 on the sidelines of the 29th edition of Carthage International Film Festival.

“El Maseer” heroine, Egyptian star Laila Elwi, will attend the movie screening as she is participating in the festival as a guest of honour. “El Maseer”, which was directed by late iconic Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, also stars Mahmoud Hemeida, Nour el-Sherif, Hany Salama, Khaled el-Nabawy, Rogeina, and Safia el-Emary, among others.

The 29th edition of Carthage Film Festival kicked off on November 3 and will run until November 10.

The festival is honouring Indian, Iraqi, Senegalese and Brazilian cinemas in its 29th edition. A number of films from these countries was selected to reflect each country’s culture, concerns and history.

The Egyptian film “Yomeddine” (Judgment Day) will represent Egypt in the festival's 29th edition. The Egyptian movie will participate in the prominent festival's official competition.

“Yomeddine” is directed by Abu Bakr Shawky, and produced by Dina Emam; a real former leprosy patient played the lead role. The movie tells the story of Beshay, a Coptic Egyptian former patient in the Leprosy Colony. He was lucky enough to be cured, unlike his late wife.

After his wife’s death, Beshay decides to leave the colony and search for his family with his friends; a donkey and a child.

Beshay’s journey takes him to the past and to the future as well, exploring how society deals with his disease and highlighting the suffering of leprosy patients in the colony.

The Cinematic Professions Syndicate chose “Yomeddine” to represent Egypt in the 2019 Oscars list for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Oscars will not be the first recognition “Yomeddine” gets, as it was awarded the Francois Chalais Prize at the Cannes International Film festival.

The 71st Cannes Film Festival held a press conference with the Egyptian filmmakers of “Yomeddine” after its screening at the festival on May 9.

The screening was attended by many international actors, including Julianne Moore, Louise Bourgoin and Kiko Mizuhara. All the attendees praised the movie’s construction and drama line, as well as the directing technique adopted by Shawky in his debut feature.
“Yomeddine” is the first movie for an Egyptian director to participate in Cannes Film Festival's main competition.

The movie managed to grab the attention of all those who watched it. International media platforms were keen to put the spotlight on “Yomeddine”, writing extremely positive reviews about the movie, which presents an innovative mixture of tragedy, comedy, and condensed shots of emotions and sentiments.

“A man who has recovered from leprosy goes in search of the father who abandoned him in a sentimental drama that infantilizes its lead character,” wrote Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

“Recalling about a thousand other titles, with the Lynch films ‘The Elephant Man’ and ‘The Straight Story’ definitely near the top of the list, this is a picaresque road movie about two mismatched characters, with rookie director A.B. Shawky offering a motley and not entirely smooth cocktail of drama and melodrama, a dash of social critique and insight, some chuckles and a few tugs at the heartstrings, mainly by virtue of its near-virtuoso score,” wrote Boyd van Hoeij in The Hollywood Reporter.

It is expected that the nominations for the 2019 Oscars will be released on Jan. 22, 2019, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC Television Network announced.