Cairo Industry Days – the industry sidebar of the Cairo Intl. Film Festival – is returning with an enhanced co-production market, an ambitious slate of projects in the Cairo Film Connection, a wide range of workshops, and a new mentoring program – Cairo Pro-Meet.
The festival revived its market last year, and Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rehim, head of Cairo Industry Days, explains to Variety how he has increased its ambition, including a major increase in participants.
“We’re building concrete steps to bolster the position of the Egyptian film industry in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region,” he says. “We have the oldest film industry in the region. Other countries have been rapidly developing their industries, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan, but Egypt continues to be a key player and our technicians continue to be the best in the region. We are implementing new incentives for film production in Egypt and reeinforcing our studios and production infrastructure.”
Abdel Rehim views this as a collaborative process, involving a partnership with the Egypt Film Commission and fostering close relationships with other leading festivals in the region, including El Gouna, Red Sea and Marrakech.
In addition to the market, one of the new ventures launched this year is Cairo Pro-Meet (Nov. 16-19), a networking platform open to Arab filmmakers, which enables them to schedule meetings with top industry professionals from around the world.
Abdel Rehim says that he has invited experts from different parts of the world, including producers, distributors, film festivals and funding institutions, since he sees considerable opportunities for co-production beyond the traditional axis of Europe and the MENA region. “We are bringing more people to Cairo Industry Days from Asia, from Africa and from Latin America. There are a lot of people outside Europe, who may be interested in the region and want to establish collaborations.”
Cairo Film Connection, the works-in-progress sidebar, headed by Rodrigo Brum, is returning for its 11th edition, with 16 projects from nine countries, ranging from development to post-production, including four projects from Egypt, three from Lebanon, two from Iraq, and two from Palestine, alongside one project each from Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen.
Cairo Industry Days also includes a special focus on genre filmmaking, including a workshop with Italian script consultant, Simona Nobile.
“Cairo Industry Days is for the whole industry, not just art house cinema,” explains Abdel Rehim. “Some of the most popular Egyptian films in recent years have been genre films, such as Marwan Hamed’s 2019 suspense-horror film, ‘The Blue Elephant 2.’ Indeed, some of the best films in the history of cinema are genre films, you only need to think of gangster films, such as ‘The Godfather.’ Making genre films requires special skills – from writing through to post-production – and we want to shed more light on this process.”
Another novelty this year will be a lab dedicated to seven-part TV series, organized in partnership with Egypt’s streaming platform Watch It, which will then produce one of the projects developed in the lab. There will also be a workshop for developing short films by emerging filmmakers based outside the capital, targeted in particular at female directors.
Cairo Industry Days will also highlight how new technologies are changing the Egyptian film industry, including workshops on extended reality (XR) and digital restoration, linked to the Cairo fest’s new section on XR films and the Cairo Classics sidebar.
A new book will be launched, about the Egyptian industry and the Cairo Film Connection, which is celebrating its 11th edition this year. The first part of the book profiles the films developed at the Cairo Film Connection that have gone on to win prizes in leading film festivals. The second part includes infographics and statistics on the Egyptian film industry.
“All these initiatives form part of our wider strategy to raise the international visibility of our film industry,” concludes Abdel Rehim. “This year at Cannes, we joined forces with the Egypt Film Commission and El Gouna Film Festival and our pavilion was awarded the Best Pavilion Design Award.”
Cairo Industry Days runs between Nov. 15 and 20, as part of the Cairo Intl. Film Festival (Nov. 12 – Nov. 21).
variety.com
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