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Egyptian directors make waves at Canada film fest
2009-09-14
TORONTO (AFP) - Egyptian filmmakers led by pioneer Yousry Nasrallah are winning over international audiences for the first time at the Toronto film festival this year, organizers said. "Egypt has always had a strong domestic industry," festival co-director Cameron Bailey told AFP. "But (its filmmakers) had a hard time breaking out internationally. "A new generation of young filmmakers is now making films that work both inside Egypt and beyond," he said. This year several films from Egypt are showing at the festival in a new trend. "Normally we have one film at the festival from Egypt at most," Bailey said, pointing to first-time feature directors Ahmad Abdall's "Heliopolis" and Ahmed Maher's "The Traveller" as examples. Canadian director Ruba Nadda meanwhile has set "Cairo Time," starring Alexander Siddig in the Egyptian capital. "Egypt is having a really strong year, asking tough questions of their society, really digging deep about what's going on there and telling good stories," Bailey said. He also highlighted the work of Cairo-born pioneering filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah, whose latest film "Scheherazade, Tell me a Story" about the lives of three women constrained by social norms, is also showing here. Nasrallah "is the senior member of this current crop and his films have done well at film festivals (worldwide)," he said. "Others who have followed in his footsteps are making films with high artistic ambitions, yet are accessible, more along the lines of European art films." As a result, "there's more than the usual melodrama of Egyptian commercial cinema to see this year."
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