Hurghada Youth Film Festival Opens Its Fourth Edition on 10 September with a Hany Shenouda Tribute

The Hurghada Youth Film Festival opens its fourth edition on 10 September at the Hurghada Culture Palace, and the opening ceremony will be a tribute to one of Egyptian cinema's most loved composers: Hany Shenouda, who died on 20 July at the age of 83.

What the opening night includes

Musician Radwan Abdel Karim will perform a programme of Shenouda's best-known film scores, including music from:

• El-Harrif ("The Street Player") — whose poster is this year's festival emblem, marking ten years since the death of its director, Mohamed Khan
• El-Mashbouh, Shams El-Zanati and La Azaa Lel Sayidat
• Asabet Hamada w Toto and El-Avocato

Festival president, screenwriter Mohamed El-Bassousy, said the tribute honours a composer whose scores were part of why those films worked, and whose creative output continued until hours before the illness that took him to hospital. Festival director Qadry El-Haggar noted that Shenouda's music travelled far beyond Egypt — his piece Longa 79 was played at the 2020 Golden Globes as Ramy Youssef walked up to collect his award for the series "Ramy", which had used the composition.

For the diary

The festival runs from 10 September at the Culture Palace in Hurghada. We will publish the screening programme when the festival releases it.