At the opening of the fifth session of the El Gouna Film Festival.. The concert was delayed and a song by Mohamed Ramadan was unsuccessful and criticism of El-Sakka after his honoring speech

The "Plaza" theater at the Convention and Culture Center witnessed several scenes, during the opening ceremony of the fifth session of the "El Gouna" Film Festival yesterday, Thursday.

The concert, which was presented by the media, Nardine Farag, began more than an hour later, despite the completion of repairing the damage caused by a fire that broke out yesterday. It included the most prominent films and clips of the past sessions.

Peace "exaggerated" for Yusra

Engineer Samih Sawiris - who went up to the stage to give his speech - insisted that the artist, Yousra, go with him to celebrate her, despite apologizing to her during the press conference held before the opening.

In his speech, the festival director Anthal Al-Tamimi confirmed that he did not intend to offend Yusra, against the background of the statement she made on her official Facebook page in response to her failure to honor her for being on the advisory committee, which annoyed her.

However, her rise in this "exaggerated" manner twice with Sawiris confirmed the existence of a strong dispute between her and the festival management, especially that Yosra, in the scenes, seemed unusually angry.

In contrast to previous sessions, Sawiris' speech seemed uncoordinated, with the exception of his praise for the workers who were able to repair what was caused by the fire due to a "malfunction" in the electrical current, and what was also remarkable was the failure of his brother Naguib Sawiris, one of the founders of the theater.

A touching celebration of the departed

The most influential shot at the opening ceremony came with a short film about the artists who left our world in 2021, most notably Waheed Hamed, Samir Ghanem and Dalal Abdel Aziz, and the video was accompanied by a touching speech by the artist Sayed Ragab.

After that, a show was presented that included dance performances, and dealt with the journey of the late artist Samir Ghanem, so he snatched the spotlight from the rest of the events of the ceremony, which was presented by the artist Lebleba, who fell behind the scenes of the theater after her speech about Samir Ghanem.

The appearance of the famous "Samoura" character, presented by the late artist, is one of the positive points in the ceremony.

Sakka error

This year, the festival honored the artist Ahmed El-Sakka, who dedicated his honor to many, including Samir Ghanem, his father, his mother, and his media wife Maha Al-Saghir.

But it seems that Al-Saqa, who improvised his speech on the stage, was not successful, as he said that Egyptian cinema after the 1967 setback was suffering from “narrowness of creation”, and none of the artists of his generation expected to become stars or heroes, so their dream was to appear in one or two scenes in a work Which was criticized on social media, as film critic Ihab Al-Turki wrote a list of the most important films shown in those years.

As for the short film that was shown on El-Sakka’s career, it was not in a way that suits his career, which began at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new millennium. A strong friendship relationship.

bad song

The festival has been keen every year since the first session to present an advertisement song, which began with the song “3 Daqat”, which Yousra sang with the singer “Abu”, and last year was the song of the singer Ramy Ayyash “Doqi Ya Mazika”, and this year the festival decided to reconcile with the artist Mohamed Ramadan. On the stage and presenting it to the festival's review, "Girl's Air", which was interrupted by the concert and had nothing to do with cinema.

The festival took advantage of the old dispute between Ramadan and Bushra, the festival’s chief operating officer, who took to the stage to confirm reconciliation with Ramadan, although reconciliation took place between the artists years ago, and after that the opening film was canceled in a precedent that is also the first of its kind in the festival.

It is also striking that the attendance of artists this year was less than in previous years, as some of them were busy photographing works of art.