The upcoming festival also disclosed a fascinating list for their ‘In Conversation With...’ the beloved series which gives audiences a chance to meet some of the biggest names in cinema from around the world.
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Photo by Getty Images, courtesy of the BFI London Film Festival
The Selfies Interviews: Kaouther Ben Hania on her second Oscar submission, plus retelling a story through different lenses
As ‘Four Daughters’ finally opens in the U.S., I sat down with the film’s director at the London Film Festival for a dose of typically straight to the point insight into her work and the film’s necessity, in our current media landscape that likes to categorize people as just good or evil, when life is really mostly lived in shades of grey.
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Baloji discusses Belgian Oscars submission 'Omen', a favorite filmmaker and the vibrations in a name
When the Belgian-Congolese rapper turned filmmaker premiered his film in Cannes, earlier this year, Baloji singlehandedly changed the history of his adoptive country for the better — a lesson for all in what it takes to begin to amend the wrongs of colonialism.
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Watch American filmmaker Alex Gibney's discuss 'In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon'
The multi-award winning documentarian who brought us ‘Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and the Oscar-winning ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ — among many, many more gems — sat down with me for a Selfies Interview you won’t want to miss.
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"...I haven't completely lost hope" writes Amos Gitai about Israel, in Sunday's 'La Repubblica'
The beloved international filmmaker and artist, who spends his time between Haifa and Paris, has taken to writing op-eds in the international media, where he equates his country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu to Machiavelli and draws parallels between Israel’s distant past with its possible undoing because of Bibi’s latest act.
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Photo by © Getty Images, courtesy of the DFI, used with permission.
Michael Winterbottom at Qumra 2023: "If you want to have a healthy film culture, you want directors who are making lots of films"
Qumra Master Michael Winterbottom is a critically acclaimed British filmmaker renowned for unconventional narratives and hard-hitting social commentary. In fact, what Winterbottom does counts as much in real life as it does on the big screen.
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John Malkovich talks 'Seneca', acting in the TikTok generation & shooting in Morocco, again
The American actor may have said something during the press conference about his good friend Julian Sands, also featured in the film Malkovich is promoting at this year's Berlinale, but during our interview the tragedy of the actor who has gone missing felt like a looming presence, unspoken and indescribable.
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An interview with Aamir Khan for 'Laal Singh Chaddha', the Indian Forrest Gump
"We have such a large and healthy audience of our own in India, the fact is that none of the filmmakers have really felt the need to reach out to a world audience," Aamir Khan told me in 2010, "and when I say really felt the need, I mean filmmakers in Argentina perhaps, or in France or Germany, different parts of the world, don't have such big and healthy audiences of their own and so they come from a situation where they really need to reach out to a world audience and an audience in the West."
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"The digital revolution has brought democracy to filmmaking": Spike Lee speaks
Thirty years after Lee's film 'Malcolm X' was the first ever international production to film in Mecca, the filmmaker returned to Saudi Arabia, to bring his film full circle and inspire film lovers in the Kingdom.
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"If only there was a Palestinian Superman": An interview with Sayed Kashua
Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian writer who pens his work in Hebrew and whose latest projects include a film helmed by an Israeli filmmaker and a TV series airing on Israeli kids TV -- but don't call the man a bridge-builder, not to his face anyway!
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"The language of cinema is universal": Damian Kocur's 'Bread and Salt' in Cairo
Before the film received one more award, this time at the Cairo International Film Festival, I sat down with the Polish filmmaker to talk cinema, inspiration and what constitutes the best soundtrack of all to him in a film.
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Photo by © Yani
Hany Abu-Assad talks 'Huda's Salon', Arab women audiences & the theme of betrayal
In his latest film, Palestinian auteur Hany Abu-Assad does what he does best -- tackles betrayal and draws us a story made in human shades of grey.
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A still from ‘Until Tomorrow’ which world premiered at Berlinale in 2022
Ali Asgari talks 'Until Tomorrow' and filmmaking in Iran
Don’t think of this film as your ordinary Western world garden variety torment, as Asgari's oeuvre usually involves two individuals dancing a dance of impossibilities with the authorities of Tehran, trying to navigate a world that makes one's humanity a challenge.
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Darren Aronofsky at El Gouna FF gives a masterclass in personal filmmaking
The American filmmaker talked about inspiration, meeting one's heroes and making personal films the audience wants to watch, at a great masterclass in Egypt. in 2021.
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A still from the short ‘Maya at 24’ by Lynne Sachs
"Lynne Sachs: Between Thought and Expression" and why you cannot miss her MoMI retrospective
All the great filmmakers have been artists of the lens. If you think about Hitchcock, Truffaut, Wilder, Kazan, Visconti, Fellini and endless more that make up our collective cinematic heritage, they constructed their work like one long sequence of aesthetics — sight and sound.
Lynne Sachs is no exception.
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Julia Vysotskaya in a still from ‘Dear Comrades!, photo by Sasha Gusov, Courtesy of NEON
Watch 'Dear Comrades!'... and some Andrei Konchalovsky wisdom will be your gift in return
So, if I had to explain why Andrei Konchalovsky’s films appeal so deeply to me, what would I say? That his women characters are always the entree in his films and often his male roles seem like the parsley sprinkled around them to enhance the presentation. Embodied often by his real-life wife Julia Vysotskaya, women like Lyuda in ‘Dear Comrades!’ appeal to my sense of womanhood, to my inner strength but also on a very basic aesthetic level. Lyuda is elegant, in her clunky shoes and with her hungry, lean body, as are the men around her. First and foremost Konchalovsky is a true artist, always loyal to the visual — the most important aspect of the seventh art.
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Rufus Sewell photographed by James Van Alden, courtesy of CIFF
Rufus Sewell does his thing at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival: "I’m not nearly as rock and roll as I used to think..."
Since “virtual is the new black” as Cairo Industry Days Head Aliaa Zaky so perfectly pointed out in a Facebook post, I got to interview Rufus Sewell on Zoom while the actor was in Cairo — with the hustle and bustle of a film festival happening all around him. As a journalist who specializes in interviews, I have to say that I’ve never interviewed anyone like Sewell. Funny, insightful, but also ready to steer me in the right direction when I went wrong. While replaying it to write it out, I found the interview fascinating and heard myself not so much in the driver’s seat, as I’m accustomed to during a Q & A, but rather enjoying a passenger’s side ride into the life, love and career of one of the most charismatic actors of our time.
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Lesson in Sincerity: Sir Christopher Hampton receives Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Cairo International Film Festival
Oscar-winning writer Sir Christopher Hampton has the wonderfully modest aura about him. Despite being an awardee of one of the most coveted prizes in the world, a celebrated screenwriter and playwright, the perfect translator of the works of two of the most notable French authors of contemporary times, Hampton is humble.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Tilda Swinton on Learning from Her Children, Four-Legged Wisdom and Cinematic Friendships
Today, on November 5th 2020 Tilda Swinton turned 60. Wrap your head around that little boys and girls. Sixty! And she looks absolutely flawless IRL. So, I celebrate her agelessness by posting an interview from Cannes 2017 when I got to sit next to her majestic beauty and fell in awe of her class.
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Paradise is a talk with the Maestro: Resharing my interview with Andrei Konchalovsky
Is Paradise always a great place, for all?
We use the word “paradise” loosely in our everyday lives, to describe an idyllic place where we spent our summer vacation, or the word’s more common counterpart “heaven” to talk about a feeling of bliss after a great meal or an intense yoga class. But can the concept of paradise be used to create a hell on earth for some?
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