Egypt's El Gouna Film Festival announces the launch of Women in Films initiative

CAIRO - 26 October 2020: The fourth edition of El Gouna Film Festival announced on October 25 the launch of Women in Films (Rawiyat) initiative. 

This initiative came as part of GFF’s mission to support the endeavors of empowering women-- especially filmmakers.

The event took place at the TUP Garden, one of the festival’s venues, in the presence of some of the initiative founding members such as Algerian director Lina Soualem; Egyptian director Kawthar Younes; Palestinian-Jordanian director Dina Nasser; and Algerian-French filmmaker Dorothée-Myriam Kellou, in which they introduced the mission and goals of their initiative.

Director Dina Nasser said that it is very important that El Gouna Film Festival hosts the launching of “Sisters in Film”, saying, “We are 9 film directors from the Arab world and diaspora, collaborating to produce films; hopefully, our 9 movies, in collaboration with each other.”

Director Lina Soualem expressed her happiness to show her first film as part of the Feature Documentary Competition of El Gouna Film Festival, saying: “I was having problems communicating with festivals, or choosing the best in terms of sending my films, as I lacked the experience in regards to communicating with other filmmakers in the Arab world.

This is exactly what our platform is all about; communication and making information available in a one stop shop.”

Egyptian filmmaker Kawthar Younis said that the “Rawiyat” initiative brings female filmmakers together from different countries of the Middle East and North Africa, with the aim of creating a new scene on a regional and global level. “We established our platform, and of course we want other women to join us.” Dorothée-Myriam Kellou concluded the conversation by saying: “Filmmakers need funding and strong support to join festivals and have their work featured. Currently, we have nothing but El Gouna Film Festival, which gives us a great start. However, we have to keep working on more partnerships and proving our presence in other festivals. We try to exist in our way to express ourselves.”