After accusations of extremism, racism and bloodyness, it demanded the new technical director of the Cairo International Film Festival, Ahmed Shawky, and the occurrence of several media confrontations and large records on social media, and reached the level of scandals due to previous "racist" statements of Shawki regarding the Egyptian Al-Ahly Club. The latter submitted his resignation, noting that the new session of the festival is supposed to be held next November.
The festival’s higher advisory committee held a meeting in which the submitted resignation was accepted and the Cairo Festival issued an official statement in which it said, “The festival’s productive head and scriptwriter, Mohamed Hefzy, and the members of the higher advisory committee would like to thank Mr. Shawky for what he presented to the festival during his work in previous sessions,
The festival confirms its commitment to continue preparing for the 42nd session, some of which will be announced in the coming weeks, while continuing to adhere to the festival's principles and values ​​such as pluralism, intercultural communication, highlighting new cinematic voices, providing a platform for cinematic talent around the world, and contributing to the development of the local and regional film industry.
The crisis started after the Minister of Culture, Dr. Enas Abdel Dayem, decided to appoint Ahmed Shawky as the artistic director of the festival to succeed the late critic Youssef Sharif Rizk Allah, who was Shawky as his assistant for the past 4 years, and the reason for the attack on Ahmed Shawky is the emergence of old publications that he published on Facebook Six years ago, some people described these publications as inciting bloodshed, violence, extremism and ridicule from the victims of Al-Ahly Club, who described them as immoral descriptions, following the massacre of the “Port Said Stadium” that killed more than 70 fans of Al-Ahly’s fans, and this reality constitutes a painful wound for the Egyptian memory.
Despite Ahmed Shawky’s apology in an official statement about his publications, saying:
“No one is greater than apologizing for a mistake, and I admit that I used in some personal writings dating back to 2014 the words of prejudice belonging to the fans of Al-Ahly club and the victims of Port Said, words of course I apologize if they caused pain to the departed and their families ». But my consolation is that these writings passed more than six years ago, which is a sufficient period for a person to review his positions and even completely change them "but the apology was not enough to solve the crisis to contain the problem.

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