Egypt’s star Khaled el Sawy to receive Career Achievement Award from El Gouna Film Festival

CAIRO - 16 October 2020: Egyptian star Khaled el Sawy to receive Career Achievement Award from the fourth edition of El Gouna Film Festival.

Khaled El Sawy is a renowned Egyptian actor born in Alexandria in 1964.

He received a Bachelor of Laws degree from Cairo University in 1985, and then a BA in film directing from the Academy of Arts in 1993.

El Sawy began his artistic career on the stage of the university theater, while he was studying law.

He co-founded the Egyptian Foundation for Theater Enthusiasts, wrote and directed several theater works, and won the Timor Prize for Theatrical Creativity in 1991 and 1992.

Throughout his career, El Sawy acted with different generations of Egyptian directors, such as Mohamed Khan in Knight of the City (1991), Khairy Beshara in Hazelnut Shells (1995), and Marwan Hamed in The Yacoubian Building (2006) and The Originals (2017). He also worked with director Sherif Arafa in Al Jazeera (2007), and with Tarek Al Eryan in Sons of Rizk 2 (2019).

El Sawy received many honors in the fields of cinema, theater, and poetry.

Dubai Cultural Magazine honored him in the field of poetry, the Supreme Council of Culture granted him an award in theatrical composition, and he received the honor of the Tétouan International Mediterranean Film Festival in Morocco in its 23rd edition in 2017.

Additionally, El Sawy received a prize for his role in the film Keda Reda (2007) at the Alexandria International Film Festival, as well as several Egyptian and Arab prizes for his role in The Yacoubian Building (2006).

This year, GFF confirmed 16 films participating in the Feature Narrative Competition, 10 films in the Feature Documentary Competition, 18 films in the Short Film Competition, as well as 2 films in GFF’s Special Presentations program.

The festival will be screening 17 films in its Official Selection out of Competition section.

One of the eagerly anticipated highlights of this year is that the festival will be the first public event hosted at the site of Gouna Conference and Culture Center (GCCC).

The concept of this edition’s poster is also inspired by the design of the center, which incorporates an elegant series of barrel vaults enclosing the auditorium with a shaded perimeter layer where the inside and outside merge, creating an atmosphere of transcendent inspiration.

For this year’s CineGouna Platform, El Gouna Film Festival has invited a number of leading regional and international experts in the field of cinema to participate in its various activities. CineGouna SpringBoard received 99 submissions (65 projects in development and 34 films in post-production) from all parts of the Arab world. A panel of experts reviewed the submissions and selected 18 projects (12 in development and 6 in post-production) to participate in this year’s edition.

They were carefully chosen on the basis of their content, artistic vision, and overall financial feasibility. The selection committee was very impressed by the high quality of the submitted projects.

The 4th edition of CineGouna Bridge will continue to serve as a forum for effective professional development. It will present a series of roundtable discussions, workshops, presentations, and master classes with key industry professionals and experts.

The programs and activities of CineGouna Platform will take place at the TU Berlin, El Gouna Campus from October 25 to 29, 2020.

El Gouna Film Festival will keep supporting Arab cinema at international festivals, empowering Arab filmmakers, especially outside the Arab world. This year, the festival continues to build on its previous collaborations with the 10th Malmo Arab Film Festival and the Final Cut in Venice workshop with cash prizes and support for exposure.

GFF will host an exhibition of the works of accomplished production designer Onsi Abou Seif, which will include some of his designs and sketches, video clips from his films, movie posters, and awards he has received over the course of his career.

El Gouna Film Festival continues its Cinema in Concert tradition—an orchestral performance of film scores of classics and audience favorites.

This year, GFF will screen Charlie Chaplin's newly restored copy of The Kid accompanied by an orchestra led by Maestro Ahmed El Saidi.

This edition’s Cinema in Concert will be held at the Gouna Conference and Culture Center.

This year, GFF’s 4th edition is sponsored by Orascom Development and El Gouna in association with O West and Minly.

GFF is organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, the Ministry of Health & Population, the Ministry of Culture and the Egyptian Film Centre.

El Gouna Film Festival is one of the leading festivals in the MENA region.

GFF aims to showcase a wide variety of films for a passionate and knowledgeable audience, while fostering better communication between cultures through the art of filmmaking.

Its goal is to connect filmmakers from the region with their international counterparts in the spirit of cooperation and cultural exchange.

The festival is committed to the discovery of new voices and strives to be a catalyst for the development of cinema in the Arab world.