El Gouna Artistic Director Marianne Khoury on Festival’s Full Return: ‘If I Am Convinced Something Needs to Happen, It Will Happen’
After canceling the 2022 edition for a “reset” and postponing the 2023 edition from October to December due to the war in Gaza, the El Gouna Film Festival is back in full force for its seventh edition, taking place between Oct. 24-Nov. 1 in the Egyptian resort town.
The postponements and uncertainty challenged artistic director Marianne Khoury, who started at the job a few months before the festival’s sixth iteration and took over from Amir Ramses. “Last year was difficult because we had to postpone it three times but, in the end, we had a really nice edition,” Khoury told Variety.
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“I think I joined at a good time when there was a need to change,” she added. “El Gouna started strong. The program was always strong but the media always concentrated the coverage on the glamor and red carpet. When I joined, I wanted to rebalance that a little bit and have the right coverage on all the programs, not just the glitz and glamor.”
One of the leading film festivals in the Middle East and North Africa region, this year’s El Gouna will feature some of the most prominent films of the year’s festival circuit, including Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes-winning “The Substance,” and Pedro Almodóvar’s Golden Lion-winning “The Room Next Door.” Amongst Arab highlights, audiences will be able to see Nabil Ayouch’s Cannes Premiere breakout “Everybody Loves Touda,” Meryam Joobeur’s Berlinale competition title “Who Do I Belong To” and Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir’s “The Brink of Dreams,” which won the Golden Eye Award for best documentary at Cannes’ Critics’ Week.
This year’s Career Achievement Awards will go to Egyptian producer and filmmaker Mahmoud Hemida, head of notable production company Al-Batrik, and Lebanese filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
“We’ve been working on the programing and the industry activities all year and I think we succeeded in putting together a great program. There’s a good geographical balance, with this being an international festival with an Arab focus; we have a lot of debut films, incredible documentaries and a high number of films by women.”
El Gouna almost reached gender parity in the program this year, with 44% of all films being directed by female filmmakers. On the features side, 12 out of the 55 films are either debuts or sophomore efforts.
As other festivals in the region continue to grow, including Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning Red Sea Film Festival, Khoury emphasizes the increased competition for Arab titles. “There is a big competition between the festivals from the MENA region, especially for the regional premieres. Arab films are [becoming] much more difficult to find. We have to think: what are the hidden gems?”
Alas, if competition makes it trickier to program the festival, it is still a positive in Khoury’s books. Not only do MENA filmmakers have more platforms in which to show their films, but the growth of festivals in the region also means more market platforms and funding bodies are available to local talent, which will boost the industry in years to come.
“Arab filmmakers need as many platforms as possible. You can’t just finance your film from one platform unless a festival wants to monopolize the production and give a film an enormous amount of money. Initiatives like CineGouna Funding, Cairo Film Connection, and Atlas Workshops in Marrakech can give a film 15, 20 thousand, but you need many of these grants to be able to finance your film. I think the challenge with festivals like El Gouna is to find projects that cannot get the big kind of money and to develop new talent, which is not easy.”
When it comes to developing talent, El Gouna is focused on nurturing filmmakers from the very beginning, as they are working on their first short films. This year’s festival is introducing a new section called CineGouna Shorts, dedicated to supporting short films and accompanied by a competition offering cash prizes.
“We believe in developing young talent and we want to see filmmakers going to international festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Venice and more… We know this can happen and it has happened, like with ‘The Brink of Dreams’ in Cannes this year. A lot of young filmmakers begin with shorts.”
Khoury, who is a managing partner in prominent Cairo-based Misr International Films—founded by her uncle, the great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine—has decades of experience in the industry, including directing several documentaries and shepherding over 30 Arab films and docs. She has also served as the Cairo Film Festival’s artistic director during a spell of turmoil after the 2011 Tahrir Square uprising.
What has she learned, then, during her year in El Gouna? “Oh, many things! Especially how to make events with corporate support, which is something I didn’t have before. This year we have new sponsors, like the Drosos and the Sawiris Foundations, and we found ways to make things work through another way of thinking. I am known to be a little bit stubborn and if I am convinced something needs to happen, it will happen. I like challenges.”
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