Egyptian director Hayat Aljowaily wins audience award at Tripoli Online Film Festival
Ahram Online, , Friday 6 Nov 2020
Aljowaily's film Maybe the Next Time was among the 12 short films competing in four different categories


Aspiring Egyptian filmmaker Hayat Aljowaily has won the audience award at the Tripoli Online Film Festival (Lebanon), which was held online from 16 to 23 October.

The online festival, which just ran its first edition, is one of the Tripoli Film Festival’s many year-long activities. It was founded as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to the current situation in Lebanon, which prevented the annual festival from being held physically.

Aljowaily’s film, ‘Maybe the Next Time,’ tells the story of an Argentinian actress (played by Mia Marotta) who learns that although her art can travel, she cannot. The film received a total of 842 votes.

The competition comprised a total of 12 short films in four different categories: Narrative, Documentary, Animation and Experimental. The participating films hailed both from the Arab world and from international filmmakers, with some films from Estonia, Spain and Italy, as well as Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

Aljowaily said that her film deals with the tedious process of visa applications for citizens from the Global South, even if they plan to travel to participate in cultural events, such as film festivals.

The young Egyptian director, a recent graduate from the Film and Media Studies program at Columbia University in New York, expressed her desire to harness the knowledge she gained through her specialised study program on the socio-political role of cinema to encourage cooperation between Arab and African filmmakers in particular, and from the Global South more generally.

She hopes to launch joint cultural projects, especially in the field of film production, that will allow underrepresented young creative talents to have access to the global film scene.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at@AhramOnlineArtsand on Facebook atAhram Online: Arts & Culture

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/390198.aspx