Cairo Industry Days Aims to Reinforce the Egyptian Industry’s Position

Cairo Industry Days – the business sidebar of the Cairo Intl. Film Festival – is returning with an enhanced co-production market, an bold slate of initiatives in the Cairo Film Connection, a variety of workshops, and a new mentoring program – Cairo Pro-Meet.

The pageant revived its market last 12 months, and Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rehim, head of Cairo Industry Days, explains to Variety how he has elevated its ambition, including a major improve in contributors.

“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 course of, involving a partnership with the Egypt Film Commission and fostering shut relationships with other main festivals in the area, including El Gouna, Red Sea and Marrakech.

In addition to the market, one in all the new ventures launched this 12 months is Cairo Pro-Meet (Nov. 16-19), a networking platform open to Arab filmmakers, which allows them to schedule conferences with top business professionals from round the world.

Abdel Rehim says that he has invited consultants from different elements of the world, including producers, distributors, movie festivals and funding establishments, since he sees appreciable alternatives for co-production past the conventional axis of Europe and the MENA area. “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 eleventh version, with 16 initiatives from 9 nations, starting from development to post-production, including 4 initiatives 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 features a particular concentrate on style filmmaking, including a workshop with Italian script marketing 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 12 months might be a lab devoted to seven-part TV sequence, organized in partnership with Egypt’s streaming platform Watch It, which is able to then produce one in all the initiatives developed in the lab. There will also be a workshop for growing brief movies by rising filmmakers based outdoors the capital, focused specifically at feminine administrators.

Cairo Industry Days will also highlight how new applied sciences are altering the Egyptian movie business, including workshops on prolonged actuality (XR) and digital restoration, linked to the Cairo fest’s new part on XR movies and the Cairo Classics sidebar.

A new e book might be launched, about the Egyptian business and the Cairo Film Connection, which is celebrating its eleventh version this 12 months. The first a part of the e book profiles the movies developed at the Cairo Film Connection that have gone on to win prizes in main movie festivals. The second half contains infographics and statistics on the Egyptian movie business.

“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 a part of the Cairo Intl. Film Festival (Nov. 12 – Nov. 21).