El-Gouna Film Festival (23-20 October) held a press conference for American-French actor Saïd Taghmaoui at the Audimax Hall in TUBerlin University in El-Gouna.

Taghmaoui received the Omar Sharif award during the festival's opening ceremony.

He expressed his gratitude to the festival for taking the initiative and the risk to hold this year’s edition amid the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “We have to learn to live with this disease and not die with this disease, and the GFF is not just a film festival, it’s a message to the whole world.”

Taghmaoui also talked about how film festivals are “a window for a country,” and that they offer a market for the cinema industry. He gave the example of the Cannes Film Festival, saying, “Cannes is interesting, because it has the market."

He also spoke about how being an actor from an Arab Muslim background is challenging in Hollywood.

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