DCAF’s fifth edition opens this year on 31 March and will run until 22 April, offering its multidisciplinary programme of local and international music, dance, theatre, film, and visual arts.

Singer Dina El-Wedidi is to open the festival at Horreya Garden downtown with a selection of her new songs, performing alongside Moroccan rock singer Khansa Batma.

The music programme curated by Mahmoud Refat will focus on North African talents.

“The lineup is really meant to show you the development of music in the region,” Refat said in D-CAF’s press release.

“They construct [their heritage] and deconstruct it, destroy it and build it again, and take it somewhere new.”

The performing arts programme will include performances from Egypt as well as international acts from Spain, Lebanon, Germany, Holland, the UK and France.

This edition will also highlight local regional art in its Arab Arts Focus (AAF), running for four days during the festival, kicking-off on 14 April.

Acting as a platform for exposing regional talents, AAF invites over 50 international curators to watch the rich programme.

AAF will also feature a section for contemporary dance, bringing five dance pieces curated by Algerian Nedjma Hadj.

Stretching outside Egypt for the first time, D-CAF will host performances in Beirut on 18 April by Syrian artists, also part of AAF.

Another development in D-CAF’s programme is its new Literature Programme.

According to the press release, “the program will include roundtable discussions, a master-class, as well as live-readings by popular local authors, who will be invited to downtown cafes to entertain audiences with selections of their work, as well as their own favorite books.”

As for the visual arts programme, Aleya Hamza of Gypsum Gallery curates this year’s group exhibition, which will include works by visual artists Doa Aly, Basma Al Sharif, Ahmed Badry, Magdi Mostafa, Ahmed Sabry, and Joe Namy.

The theme of the multimedia exhibit is the potential use of sound and the conventions of music sampling as an artistic device, bringing a wide range of works from text, image, object, and sound.

D-CAF’s film programme will put the spotlight on marginalized individuals in the society.

Curated by Remi Bonhomme, the programme manager for Cannes’ International Critics’ Week, six European films by first-time directors were selected under the theme of tackling the struggles of people marginalised on the sidelines of society.

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