Cairo International Film Festival announces its dates for 2021

The event is the oldest annually running international film festival in the Middle East and Africa

Cairo International Film Festival president Mohamed Hefzy. This year's festival will take place in December. Courtesy Ciff

The 43rd Cairo International Film Festival will take place on December 1 to 10, it was announced this week.

While few other details about the event have been revealed, its closing ceremony will be on December 9 and all the prize-winning films will screen again on the final day of the festival.

This year's iteration will also offer prizes to 15 film projects.

As with the previous three events, the festival will also include the industry-focused Cairo Industry Days and its Cairo Film Connection co-financing event.

Ciff is the oldest annually running international film festival in Africa and the Middle East and was founded in 1976.

“The festival’s programming team and management are thrilled by the challenge that this upcoming edition offers, and we are eager to present a diverse and rich line-up of films and a selection worthy of the festival’s audience that has come to expect more in terms of quality and surprises year after year,” said Egyptian film producer Mohamed Hefzy, president of Ciff.

“During the last three years we did strive to realise our fullest ambitions and utmost success in our offering of programming, and in the various support platforms offered to professionals by Cairo Industry Days, including the Cairo Film Connection, which last year offered prizes valued at nearly $250,000 to 15 very different quality projects.”

The 2020 event featured 84 films from 43 countries, including 33 Mena premieres. Two new aspects were also introduced: a cash prize of $5,000 for the best short film – the first prize of its kind in Ciff's history – and an award for best female representation.

The latter is in line with the festival's commitment to the Gender Parity Pledge 5050×2020, which it signed in 2018, becoming the first Arab festival to join the Cannes-born initiative that seeks to ensure all film festivals improve transparency around the selection process and programming committee, record the gender of the filmmakers and crews of all submissions, and to work towards equality on all executive boards.

Because of the pandemic, last year festival's dates were pushed back by two weeks and it was held at 50 per cent capacity to ensure proper Covid-19 safety measures were in place. Its panels, workshops, masterclasses and question-and-answer sessions were also available via Zoom.

The format for the 2021 event has not yet been revealed.

More information is at www.ciff.org.eg