Three Egyptian shorts, juror participating in Clermont-Ferrand Int'l Short Film Festival

Ahram Online , Monday 3 Feb 2025

Three Egyptian films will be screened at the 47th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (31 January — 8 February) in France, and Egyptian filmmaker Sherif El-Bendary has joined the International Competition jury panel.

Festival

 

The Egyptian short films include My Brother (2024), I Told You So (2023), and Dry Hot Summer (2015). 

My Brother, a 15-minute animated auto-fiction, was written and directed by brothers Abdelrahman and Saad Dnewar.

It ​explores the past complexities shared by two identical twins, with a split narrative retelling the two sides of their memories.

This narrative blurs the lines between their identities, reality and fiction, and present and past.

The film is the only Egyptian entry in the International Competition.

It will be screened alongside 64 other films "that expose, question, and invite us to look with a fresh pair of eyes at a reality where everyday life rubs stands alongside the extraordinary," the festival's catalogue reads.

I Told You So, a 26-minute-long documentary, was directed by Malak Al-Sayyad and Amaan Stewart.

The film is a deeply personal, first-person exploration of living and loving despite chronic pain while battling with doctors, sceptics, and that little voice inside your head telling you you are crazy. 

It is also one of 12 titles that constitute The African Perspective, one of the festival's parallel segments.

Dry Hot Summer will be screened within one of the opening ceremonies of the festival's segments.

The 30-minute film, directed by Sherif El-Bendary and written by Nura El-Sheikh, captures the chance meeting of two lonely Egyptians on a bustling and hot summer day in Cairo.

The day's journey disturbs the two characters' stifling routines and takes them on an expedition of self-discovery.

The film premised at the 13th Dubai International Film Festival in 2016.

It won the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize for International Cooperation at a gala held during the Berlinale Talents, a six-day creative summit for up-and-coming filmmakers at the Berlin Film Festival.

 


 

Sherif El-Bendary 
 

The film director, El-Bendary, also serves on the International Competition jury panel of the 77th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

El-Bendary, born in 1978 in Cairo, graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in 2001 and continued his studies at the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo, where he obtained his diploma in directing in 2007.

In 2017, he directed his first feature film, Ali, the Goat, and Ibrahim, which won the Best Feature Film Award at the Malmo Film Festival (2017) and the Audience Award at the Alexandria International Film Festival (2018).

His recent short, Better than Earth, received a Silver Tanit at the Carthage Film Days (Tunisia).

The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival is the largest international film festival dedicated to short films. Held annually, it is the second-largest film festival in France after Cannes.

The festival is held in Clermont-Ferrand, a city in central France known for its vibrant cultural scene and iconic architecture.
 

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