(Photo: Film still from Egypt's Modern Pharaohs)
Egypt's Modern Pharaohs, a documentary by the Egyptian-born French filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri, will be screened during the 21st International Documentary Film Festival being held this month in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
The documentary is a French production that covers key episodes of Egypt modern political history, from Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat to Hosni Mubarak.
According to the film's promotional material, it follows the path of the different regimes in power which ultimately led to the revolution in 2011.
El-Tahri, a filmmaker, author and news correspondent, has directed numerous films since 1990, including the Emmy-nominated The House of Saud (2005) and The Price of Aid (2004), which won the European Media Prize.
Her cinematography also includes Cuba: An African Odyssey (2008), which won awards in France, Canada, Angola and Venezuela.
The festival will screen three other films on the Middle East and North African region: the short I Have a Weapon (2015) by Palestinian Ahmed Shawar, which covers the story of the Kafar-Kaddoum village that was expropriated by the Israeli army for the creation of a Jewish settlement in 2002; The Desert of the Desert (2016), a Brazilian production which shows life is in Western Sahara; and The Sniper of Kobani (2015), a Syrian documentary that shows the daily life of Kurdish sniper Haron in the Syrian city of Kobani.
The It’s All True – International Documentary Film Festival will screen a total 85 movies from 26 countries, with 22 being world premieres. The annual event was created to promote the documentary film production and to increase reflections on the genre. It will run from 7 to 17 April.
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