Egypt to host first Luxor film festival

The Luxor African Film Festival is due to start with its first edition taking place from 21 to 28 February in the city of Luxor, Egypt. Luxor is described as the “Biggest Open Museum of the World”, since it contains a big share of the world’s historical monuments, such as the temples of Thebes.
The festival has given itself the mission to support and encourage African film productions and partnerships between the countries of the continent, through strengthening the humanitarian and political ties between the peoples of Africa in general, and African artists in particular.
Hans-Christian Mahnke, chairperson of the Namibian section of AfricAvenir, has been invited as guest of honour to the festival. Moreover, AfricAvenir is the only non-Egyptian co-organiser of the festival.
AfricAvenir was instrumental in setting up this first edition of the festival. The contribution of AfricAvenir, an official partner to the festival, has been, amongst others, contacting film-makers to submit their films, the preselection of films, suggesting and making contacts to selection committees, jury members, and workshop participants. Furthermore, AfricAvenir helped the festival organisers to establish contacts to key stakeholders within the African film industry and the film media houses.
Besides Mahnke’s attendance as special guest, Namibia will be further represented by two  films from Perivi Katjavivi – “Love Is” and “Eembwiti”. Namibia’s cinematic presence will further be felt by the film “Captor and Captive”, a documentary from South Africa, dealing with the story of Danger Ashipala and Johan van de Mescht.
The idea of the festival was drawn up by Egyptian scriptwriter Sayed Fouad, who then associated the idea with the Independent Shabab Foundation (I-Shabab), an Egyptian NGO, which is the organiser of the festival. The team thought of Luxor to encourage decentralisation of cultural events to move a  away from Cairo and Alexandria, which are piling up with different festivals.