'Bashes Egypt's reputation'

"Rish", winner of the two "Cannes" prizes, raises an Egyptian controversy... and artists withdraw from his performance ceremony

The Egyptian film "Feathers" won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in France and won great acclaim when it was shown internationally, but this did not prevent it from being criticized and attacked after its participation in the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt.

Although the film won the Critics’ Week Award and the Jury Prize of the International Federation of Film Critics (Fepresi) in July, some artists and critics directed criticism at it after it was shown in the feature film competition at El Gouna Festival on Sunday evening, saying that it “damages Egypt’s reputation” because The state of extreme poverty and misery experienced by a family is the focus of his events.

The film, directed by Omar Al-Zuhairi, tells the story of a poor family consisting of a father, a mother and three children.

One day, the father decides to celebrate the birthday of one of his sons, so he brings a magician to present entertaining paragraphs to the guests, but when the magician uses the father to perform a paragraph, he enters a large chest of fear and turns it into a chicken and the father disappears.

It is from this absurd paradox that the events of the film begin, as the wife resorts to all means to retrieve the father and searches for the sorcerer, but to no avail.

After the family's situation is relatively stable, the father appears again, but his miserable condition and his loss of speech and movement makes him a new burden on the family.

Al-Zuhairi said in an interview with Reuters, "The idea seems comical and is closer to a joke by turning the husband into a chicken, but when we approach the story, we see it as a big problem, a problem of life or death."

He added, "The film is completely different, it has a renewed cinema, and it has a lot of experimentation. The difference is sometimes confusing for some people."

He continued, "Anything that involves renewal is met with attempts to categorize, but in the end I am Egyptian, and the film is Egyptian, and the film is not the property of its makers, but rather the property of the audience."

Al-Zuhairi, 33, has two short films to his credit. He also worked as an assistant director in a number of films, in addition to his work in the field of advertising.

He said that the preparation of his first feature film took a long time, but he completed the filming process in only five weeks, noting that most of the scenes are decorations, in addition to a part made with graphics.

And about his choices of actors, he said that they are all unprofessional and pose in front of the camera for the first time, and the aim of using them was to put real characters in line with the world presented in the film.

Shahinaz Al-Akkad, the producer of (Rish), said that she receives hundreds of scenarios, but she was very excited about the film from the first reading.

She added, "The director created his own world, so the viewer cannot judge where these events take place or when, in addition to that everything in the film goes against logic and therefore we see in front of us a picture made of imagination."

And she added, "I know that the film is heart-wrenching and can be read on more than one level, but it has nothing to do with politics, and I see that Omar has given us an interesting job."

She pointed out that classifying films as festival films or commercial films is unrealistic, because in the end there is a good film and a bad film, "even our film, which is classified as elitist and addresses the intellectuals, received mixed reactions, as there is nothing that everyone agrees on absolutely."

Some critics had expected that "feathers" would become Egypt's candidate for the Oscar for best foreign film after the makers announced their intention to release it in theaters in December, but this dream was shattered after the great controversy that arose in the Egyptian media.

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