Nadine Mustafa Cairo Film Festival announces the details of the 43rd International Critics’ Week.
The Cairo International Film Festival announced the details of the films participating in the International Critics Week competition, which will be held within the activities of the 43rd session, which is scheduled to start from November 26 to December 5.
For his part, critic Osama Abdel-Fattah, director of the International Critics Week, said that the competition includes 7 films, representing many countries in terms of production, other than that these countries are from four different continents, in order to achieve the diversity that the festival is keen on annually.
Abdel-Fattah explained that these films participating in the International Critics Week competition are all shown for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa, as they have only been shown in the official sections of several major festivals, which in turn have awarded some of these films important prizes.
The list of films participating in the International Critics’ Week competition is as follows:
1- Amparo | Amparo
Directed by: Simone Misa Soto
Country: Colombia, Sweden, Germany
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
During the events of this work, which participated in the International Critics’ Week in Cannes this year, mother Amparo races alone to free her teenage son, when she learns that the Colombian army has recruited him by force and is about to send him to the most dangerous fronts of the civil war, and the rescue operation turns into a struggle for survival of her family.
“Amparo” in Spanish means “protection” or “refuge”, which is what the mother always does, but here she rises to save her liver in the literal sense of the word.
In this film, the matter is deeper than depicting the scourge of war, deeper than political and military calculations, and even deeper than highlighting the war bill paid by civilians from bereaved mothers and orphaned children, as it is related to the human soul itself, and its direct confrontation with the mighty war machine, and the spirit against those who He insists on making it fuel for his madness.
2- The dark heart of the forest | Dark heart of the forest
Directed by: Serge Mirzabekiantz
Country: Belgium, France
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
During the events of the film, 16-year-old Nikolai lives between the social welfare institution and alternative families’ homes, chasing after his childhood memories as a foundling. When he meets 15-year-old Camille, he convinces her to run with him to the forest to form the family of his dreams.
Although it is another movie of puberty or adolescence, it carries a different “wild” spirit that resembles the spirit of its two young heroes who seem rebellious, but in fact, they are miserable beings looking for love and the family warmth that they were deprived of, and also similar to the forest in which the two teenagers resorted, which is considered – In her understanding of them – “a surrogate mother” who compensates both of them for the mother they lost.
The work is impressive, exposing the coldness of feelings and social imbalance in Western societies, despite what appears on the surface officially of care for the outcast groups.
3- Al-Madani | La Civil
Directed by: Teodora Mihai
Country: Mexico, Belgium, Romania
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
The events take place in northern Mexico, where a teenage girl is kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand a large ransom from her family. Despite the ransom being paid, the kidnappers hold back, and the authorities refuse to help, so her mother takes it upon herself to find her.
This film may have earned a “Courage Award” from the official “Un Certain Regard” section of the Cannes Film Festival 2021 as it bravely storms the thorny, chaotic, spider-web of gangs in northern Mexico.
With strong cinematic skill and language, the action turns an ordinary, peaceful mother into a fighter in order to get her kidnapped daughter back. During her long and dangerous journey between dens and bunkers, the mother’s steps paint a bleak but sadly true picture of a society crippled by violence and making the living look and live like the dead.
4- The stranger | The stranger
Directed by: Amir Fakhreddine
Country: Syria, Palestine, Germany
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
The events of the film take place in the occupied Golan, where “Adnan”, a former doctor, lives surrounded by crises with his father, who decides to deprive him of the inheritance, and his wife’s family, after he turned into a drunkard, and things develop after he meets a war-wounded soldier in his country.
The film not only bears the title of Albert Camus’s famous novel, but it also dives into the depths of a man who is experiencing an existential crisis after absurdity surrounds him from every direction, such as his personal life that is collapsing, his thorny relationship with his father, and the general crisis that everyone suffers from in his occupied town, where no No one can exit or enter it unless by passing through an Israeli checkpoint.
The film’s atmosphere is bleak and frustrating, perhaps explaining the director Amir Fakhr El-Din’s use of fog in many scenes in his first film, which participated in the last Venice Festival and was chosen by Palestine to represent it in the Oscar for Best International Film.
5- Wild roots | Wild Roots
Directed by: Heine Kiss
Country: Hungary, Slovakia
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
The events of the film deal with the story of a twelve-year-old girl who rebelled against her life with her grandmother and searches for her father until she finds him just out of prison and works as a “violent” guard in a nightclub… Will their relationship succeed despite all the difficulties?
This film, which participated in the East-West competition at the Karlovy Vary Festival, is small in terms of budget but big in heart and feelings. It dives skillfully, and in a strong and delicate cinematic language at the same time, in a thorny relationship between a father and his daughter, the distance between them seems great at first, but we discover shortly They are not different from each other, as both seem outwardly aggressive, but approaching them shows that the truth may be different, in an amazing performance by non-professional actors, while the director Heine Kiss was distinguished in their management and the result was a work that will remain in the memory.
6- Blue Moon | Blue Moon
Directed by: Alina Gregory
Country: Romania
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
The events of the film deal with a strong family drama, which managed to win the Grand Prix of the San Sebastian Film Festival last September, by diving into the feelings of “Irina”, a girl who dreams of completing her higher education in her country’s capital, Bucharest, but collides with her violent and authoritarian family who wants her to join her father in London. In an ambiguous sexual relationship with an artist, Irina finds the motivation to confront her family’s violence.
The film belongs to the “Women’s Cinema”, which accurately expresses her feelings and raises her issues, but before that, it belongs to the “Author’s Cinema”, where Alina Gregory directs the script that she wrote about her story in her first film as a director after ten years of working as an actress.
7- Vera dreams of the sea | Vera dreams of the sea
Directed by: Kalterina Krasnicki
Country: Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia
Show: First show in the Middle East and North Africa
The film revolves around the ordinary person, with simple dreams, when he collides with a harsh material reality that does not know emotions, and about a woman who is searching for her most basic rights but is forced to confront a domineering patriarchal society in order to obtain them. Vera, a sign language interpreter, discovers after her husband’s suicide, That he mortgaged their house in a gambling game, and that his suicide incident is linked to a scandal involving a number of “old people”.
Action Events A seemingly simple drama yet profoundly profound, it deservedly won the grand prize at the last Tokyo International Film Festival.
