“I am very happy that my friend Amir Ramses has accepted the management of the Cairo International Film Festival, because of his experience in this field, and I wish him success,” stated newly-appointed president of the CIFF superstar Hussein Fahmy, who succeeds Mohamed Hefzy — an Egyptian producer and scriptwriter who presided over the festival throughout the last four editions (2018-2021).

From his side, Ramses expressed his honour to work under the iconic Fahmy in managing the prestigious CIFF, saying: “I aspire to follow in the footsteps of the previous team, which had a great role in developing the festival in the past years.”

Ramses is among the best-known directors of his generation. Born in 1979 and a graduate of the Higher Institute of Cinema, Ramses has a large score of achievements as a film director.

He is also known for being an Artistic Director of the El-Gouna Film Festival since its launch in 2017; a post he resigned from right before the closing ceremony of the festival’s 5th edition in 2021.

His career in filmmaking launched besides Youssef Chahine, with whom he worked as an assistant director before moving on to create his own works. Apart from directing, Ramses also wrote scripts for a number of his films, including ‘Jews of Egypt’ — a two-part documentary that released in 2013 and 2014 that he directed and cowrote with Mostafa Youssef.

He also wrote and directed ‘Cairo Time’, a film that earned Sherif Ramzy a Best Supporting Actor Award from the Cairo National Festival for Egyptian Cinema.

Ramses’ more recent film, ‘Curfew’ — which he wrote and directed — earned him and his cast a variety of accolades and awards at the Cairo International Film Festival, where it premiered in 2020. The film also won the Audience Award at the Malmo Film Festival in 2021 and won most of the awards at the Egyptian Catholic Centre Film Festival in 2021, including Best Director, Best Film, and Best Actress (Elham Shahin).

The film brought in a total of 12 awards, sweeping most of the major awards given to films released in 2020 by the Cairo Film Society.

Ramses’ new series, ‘Colours of the Sea’, starring Khaled El-Nabawi and Aisha Ben Ahmed is yet to be released.

Cairo International Film Festival is one of the oldest and most prestigious festivals in the Arab world and Africa and is the only festival in the Arab and African region registered as ‘category A’ by the International Federation of Producers in Paris.