For the first time in the history of Cannes Film Festival, five Arab countries will participate in the festival 55th session, which will kick off on May 15, 2002.
The participating Arabic films include Rashidah by the Algerian director Yasminah Beshir, Fi Entithar al Saadah (Waiting for Happiness) by director Abdel Rahman Sisaco from Mauritania and Ardh Majhoulah (Unknown Land) b the Lebanese director Ghassan Salhab. This is in addition to the film Tadhiyat (Sacrifices) by the Syrian director Osama Mohammed and the Palestinian film Tadakhul Elahi (Divine Intervention) by the director Elia Suleiman.
This is the first time for Palestine to participate in the French Festival official contest as is the case with Syria, Lebanon, Mauritania and Tajikstan under the category Special View. This category includes this year 21 films from 17 different countries. As for Algeria, this is not the first time for it to participate as the Algerian director al Akhdar Hamina won the Palm Do’r award in the seventies for his film Sanawat al Jamr.
Also the Egyptian Cultural development Fund will participate in the film market, festival activity, for the fifth year in a row.
The Fund Manger, Salah Shakware, told the daily al Ahram, “Egypt’ wing will provide all information about the Egyptian cinema which includes two books. The first book is about cinema industry in Egypt and the second is about the Egyptian narrative and documentary cinematography during the period between 1990-2001 -- Albawaba.com
