The 45th Cairo International Film Festival Opens Submissions and Announces a New Competition for Documentaries

Opening submissions in all categories for creators who wish to participate in Cairo International Film Festival activities are announced. The 45th edition will be held at the Egyptian Opera House from November 15 to 24, 2023.
The submission process shall officially be open to requests from all over the world from April 15, 2023, until August 1, 2023, via the festival’s official website.

Mr. Hussein Fahmy, President of the festival, stated, “We are happy with all the great feedback we have received about the last edition from both the press and the festival’s audience, and we are proud of all achievements of the forty-fourth edition at the level of programming and inviting important industry guests.
We also consider receiving great industry stars such as Bella Tarr, Naomi Kawase, and Matthew Kassowitz, and the special program for the late French director Jean-Luc Godard, as an indication of the global position of CIFF worldwide, and the place it occupies with its ancient history in Cinema industry.
We promise the festival audience an edition no less than the previous one in terms of the quality and level of films and the rather important participating guests.”

Director Amir Ramses, director of the festival, added: “Choosing the program for the 44th edition’s films was a great adventure, and full of ambition that made this edition worthy of the name and history of the Cairo Film Festival. We were so pleased sharing this diverse group of distinguished films with the festival’s audience, and this year we promise several similar surprises at the level of various film competitions and special festival programs. We also added this year a competition for documentary films as part of the festival’s development plan and its absorption of various currents and cinematic styles, not to mention celebrating a rather valuable genre in the industry.”

The activities of the last edition witnessed the participation of a large group of the most notable films shown in the most influential international festivals. It received critical acclaim and won many noteworthy awards.

The last edition witnessed the screening of 108 films from 53 countries, including 30 films in their global and international premieres and 57 films in their premieres in the Middle East and North Africa. Among these films was “Alcarràs,” winner of the (Golden Bear Award) at the “Berlin Film Festival”, “Bread and Salt”, which won the (Jury Prize) for the Horizons Competition at the “Venice Film Festival”, as well as “EO”, which won the (jury and soundtrack) awards at the “Cannes Film Festival”, “Saint Omer”, which won the )Grand Jury Prize) and the (Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis) Award from the “Venice Festival”, as well as “Banshees of Inisherin”, winner of the (Best Actor and Best Screenplay) awards at the “Venice Film Festival”, and The Fabelmans, directed by the great Steven Spielberg, which opened the last festival session.

Two classic Egyptian cinema films have also been restored and re-presented to the public, namely “Diaries of a Deputy in the Countryside” by Tawfiq Saleh and “A Song over the Passage” by Ali Abdel-Khalek.

Cairo International Film Festival is one of the oldest and most regular festivals in the Arab world and Africa. It acquired its unique status by being the only festival in the Arab and African region registered under Category “A” in the International Federation of Producers in Paris (FIAPF).