CineGouna awarded more than $350,000 to 16 film projects at El Gouna

CineGouna, the industry arm of the El Gouna Film Festival, awarded more than $350,000 in cash and services during the festival's ninth edition, which ran on the Red Sea until 23 October. Forty awards went to 16 of the 19 projects taking part.

More than 320 Arab film projects applied to CineGouna Funding this year, more than 100 of them from Egypt. That volume of Egyptian submissions prompted the festival to create Egyptian Voices, a new strand giving four additional local projects training in pitching, packaging and co-production.

Who won

• Syrian filmmaker Rama Abdy's documentary "House No. 7", about three women building a refuge in Damascus, took the $15,000 CineGouna Platform Award for a project in post-production.
• Algerian filmmaker Zoulikha Tahar's "Paradise Beach" won the $15,000 award for a project in development.
• Sudanese filmmaker Marwa Zein's first fiction feature, "Lily's Makkah", received a €10,000 grant, post-production support and an invitation to Durban FilmMart.

The projects in the programme also held more than 140 one-to-one meetings with companies, institutions and international festivals.

Ahmed Shawky, who heads CineGouna Funding, told Variety that many Arab countries have no national film fund, that co-production treaties are limited and that regional funding is volatile. He said Egypt has no national film fund despite a century of cinema and more than 4,000 features, and that its film commission concentrates on attracting foreign productions rather than financing local ones.

CineGouna Emerge, the festival's programme for emerging filmmakers and film professionals from Egypt, the Arab world and Africa, has now taken in more than 300 participants. This year's group spanned 16 nationalities and included Egyptians from 20 of the country's 27 governorates.

Hayat Aljowaily, the Egyptian filmmaker and producer who heads Emerge, said the programme at first concentrated on covering the cost of bringing participants to El Gouna, but that getting newcomers through the door was not enough on its own. "Year after year, we realized that access alone wasn't enough, and that we had to create an environment and carve out a space for these participants," she told Variety. She said El Gouna "is not really accessible for all Egypt", and that reaching filmmakers outside Cairo is central to the programme's purpose.

Emerge has since added mentorship, workshops, industry meetings and its own campus in the middle of the festival.

Ahmed Amer, the producer and screenwriter who heads the CineGouna Forum, said money is not the only thing the region lacks. "Filmmakers need more creative producers," he told Variety. "Funding is definitely an issue, but creative producers are needed badly."