4th El Gouna Film Festival kicks off on Sept. 26

CAIRO - 13 February 2020: The fourth El Gouna Film Festival will be held from Sept. 24 to Oct. 2, 2020. The activities of El Gouna Cinema Platform will take place from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, 2020.

The festival set the date for receiving requests for films - of all types, long and short - from March 1 to July 15, 2020.

The festival's third edition attracted 740 cinematic individuals, among filmmakers, distributors and sales agents, in addition to 750 accredited participants from the global, regional and local press. The festival’s third edition recorded the sales of 33,000 tickets.

Eighty three films from 44 countries participated in the festival’s third edition. The prize money for the winning films totaled up to $ 220,000 in all the competitions.

Because of the extraordinary success of its previous editions, the festival has become a trusted platform for filmmakers. The festival presented and highlighted numerous successful films in 2019, including the winning film of the Golden Star El Gouna Award for the Feature Films category “Satamot fel 20” (You Will Die At Twenty) for Amgad Abu el-Alaa and "Corpus Christi" for director Jan Komasa, winner of the Silver Star El Gouna Award.

The festival also honored a number of prominent cinematic names, such as the star Mohamed Henedy and the distinguished director and producer Mai Masri, who was known for her documentary works that had a poetic nature.

The festival also granted the Variety Prize to Sudanese director Suhaib Gasmelbari for his film “Talking About Trees” and was awarded the Gold El Gouna Star Award for the Best Long Documentary Film.

The El Gouna Film Platform - a project development and a co-production space for the Arab world - has chosen 12 film projects in the development phase and 6 films in the post production stage, out of 133 submitted film projects.

The prize money awarded by the platform to the winners totaled up to $ 240,000, including two official prizes totaling up to $15,000 each.

The rest of the awards were funded by the festival’s partners and sponsors. The platform also presented a wide range of lectures, dialogue tables and workshops.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the extraordinary late novelist Ihsan Abdul Quddus, the festival organized a memorial exhibition in his memory.

In addition, the festival presented a number of classic films recently restored by directors such as Farid Boughedir, Walter Sals, François Truffaut and Federico Fellini in the festival’s Special Screenings section.

In cooperation with the American Embassy in Cairo, the festival hosted a concert titled "Cinema in a Concert '', presented at the Grand Marina Theater. It included a number of famous music compositions accompanying Hollywood classics.

The festival also signed a memorandum of understanding with UNICEF to support the rights of marginalized children in Egypt and the entire region, in the belief in the power of cinema to bring about a positive change in the lives of millions of children worldwide.

A partnership agreement has also been signed with EVTA to highlight refugee issues and their voices in the film industry.

The festival extended its cooperation with Facebook and Instagram at a workshop held in an attempt to answer some urgent questions related to the use of social media in the film industry.

The festival also collaborated with the Film Industry Education Forum, an independent initiative that aims to support the film industry by developing the capabilities of its students.