The non-competitive program screened the films on the sidelines of the festival on Thursday.
The programme included screening 11 animated films directed by Egyptian women and a special Q & A with Mona Sheded, Egyptian film critic and a curator of Kemet's Daughters. Sheded also serves on a jury of Animator's Polish Animated Short Films segment.
During the Q & A session, held at the Poznań's Moza Cinema, Sheded shed light on contemporary Egyptian women animators. She also spoke about Egypt being the first Arab and African country to produce animated films, whose popularity peaked in the 1960s.
"Today many contemporary Egyptian female animators are trying to find their way, often despite the lack of funds, to produce animation. Some of them have managed to achieve success not only at a national level but also internationally," Sheded said.
The films screened at the festival were produced between the 2010s and 2023. They vary in duration between 2 and 13 minutes.
The titles included in Kemet's Daughters include Zomrada’s Secret by Sara Mostafa, Noura and Zahra by Menna Hamdi, There Once Was a Boy by Salma Enani, Into the Light by Sara Shahin, The Little Red Riding Hood by Shaimaa El-Gazzar, Play-the-game by Sandra Moneer, I Might Not Normally Share This by Noura Rahman, Guardians of the Feathers by Alia Wahby, The Air and the Worlds by Rana Ashraf, Memorial by Mariam Abdel-Rahman, and How Did South African Apartheid Happen and How Did It Finally End? by Aya Marzouk.
The selection of films brings together the voices of many young women animators, who present various topics and techniques as well as Egypt's dynamic animated art sector.
In addition, some films have already garnered some awards and were praised by international audiences.
For instance, Into the Light (2021) was Sara Shahin's first animated short film. It won the Best Student Animation award at the Animae Caribe Animation & Digital Media Festival (Animae Caribe, Trinidad and Tobago, 2021).
How Did South African Apartheid Happen and How Did It Finally End? (2023) brought Aya Marzouk a Jury Award for a Commissioned Film at the Annecy Animated Films Festival (France, 2024).
This is the first time a Polish animated films festival has dedicated a special programme to Egyptian films.
The International Animated Film Festival (Animator) has been held annually since 2008 in Poznań. It is the largest animated film festival in Poland. During each edition of Animator, over 300 films from different countries worldwide were screened, including retrospectives, reviews, premieres, or rarely shown works of animation pioneers.
In 2017, Animator received the status of an Oscar-qualifying festival.
Journalist and film critic Mona Sheded is also an editor at the Alaa Eldin Children Magazine, one of the many publications of Al-Ahram newspaper.
She also writes about film and culture in other papers and online platforms of Al-Ahram, including Al-Ahram Daily and Ahram Online (English). She also writes for numerous international publications, including Screen Daily and Rassef.
Sheded is also a managing editor of the Daily Bulletin, published by the Cairo International Film Festival.
As a media consultant, Sheded leads public relations and press departments at several local and regional festivals.
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