Hurghada Youth Cinema Festival Reveals 49 Films for Its Fourth Edition

The Hurghada Youth Cinema Festival has unveiled the line-up for its fourth edition, announcing the films selected for its competitions together with the juries that will judge them.

49 films from Arab and foreign countries make up the competition programme, according to Mobtada. The announcement was carried on Saturday by a wide spread of Egyptian outlets — among them Youm7, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al-Ahram Gate, Sada El-Balad, Al-Bawaba News, Akhbar El-Youm and Dar Al-Hilal — each reporting that the festival had revealed both its competition titles and its jury panels.

Beyond that, the reports published so far do not give the festival's dates, its venues in Hurghada, the names of the jury members, or a breakdown of how the 49 titles are divided between the competitions. Nor do they say which countries are represented.

For a city whose calendar is usually built around beaches, dive boats and hotel entertainment, a film festival is still a young fixture — this is only the fourth edition. It lands in a summer that has already been unusually busy on the coast: Hurghada's hotels have reported near-full occupancy for three consecutive months, and further north El Gouna is preparing the ninth edition of its own, far larger, film festival.

For residents, a youth-cinema festival is one of the few chances in the year to see Arab and international work on a screen in Hurghada rather than in Cairo. For visitors, the thing to watch for is the schedule: until the organisers publish dates and venues, there is no way to plan around it.