I tried so hard to be neutral and unbiased while I report about Alexandria Film Festival the 28^th round for Mediterranean countries.

So I waited till it ended, and here I am.

I lived a whole week(from 12^th to18^thof September 2012) in very beautiful city (oldest Alexandria in the world) surrounded by beautiful group of talented filmmakers, actors, journalists etc…

I’ve watched dozens of films: long, short, documentary, animation…great movies and superficial ones.

All I can say It was a REAL film festival, with all diversity, competition, cinema science workshops, I witnessed the hard work of the organizers who were so self-devoted and very insisted to make this festival succeed, overriding so many obstacles, back-stabs, ungratefulness, but they fought their way till the end.

The Opening and closing show was so brilliant, performed by very talented and promising students of Academy of Arts, inspired by Egyptian Cinema Legacy.

There was also honoring bunch of Mediterranean stars like Meltem Cumbul the Turkish actress, and bunch of Egyptian artists due to their effort in human right cause in their cinema work,like:  Khaled Abol Naga, Khaled Youssef, Nasser Abdel-Rahmane and Khaled Saleh

From the beginning till the end you can easily tell that they are men of honor.

I’d like to thank Dr.Waleed Seif (Festival president) and his associates (Muhammad Yousef, Kenawy, Bannan, Mervat Omar, Emam Omar, Al-Amir Abaza, Dr.Said Shimi and so many hard workers) for their sincere efforts.

Of course this doesn’t mean that the festival was flawless.

There was the poor quality of the movies (DVD on the cinema screen despite the filmmakers brought the 35mm copy)

Lack of festival local advertising, the people of Alexandria didn’t know about the festival almost till its end.

The time table of symposiums, some suddenly canceled some suddenly time shifted…etc.

General notes about the festival:

The foreigner competitors were very serious about the competition while the Egyptians were so arrogant.

The Moroccan movie (Androman of carbon and blood) was so authentic and unique handling so critical case (woman suppression in Arab world from Human rights POV) I highly recommend it and want to thank its director and screen writer Azlarabe Aloui for his obvious effort. The film is a real gem indeed.

The Tunisian movie (Always Brando) handling the story of the Tunisian director Ridha Behi, who was planning to make a movie with the legend Marlon Brando, but his sudden death left Ridha devastated in the middle of nowhere, without his movie star not even a production, it’s an autobiography, very decent treatment for (The Other/the western/the American) and how he can be human with good deeds and bad ones, not pure evil as the inherited Image of invasion troops.

The Algerian Movie “How big is your love” directed by Fatma Zohra  Zamoum, very touchy story about a kid moved to his grandparents’ house after his parents got divorced, so warm relationship between the grandson and his grandma and grandpa.

There were also very remarkable well-made movies, Turkish, Bosnian, Spanish, Italian, etc…

The Jury has proven their fairness, by letting the prosaic Egyptian movie (After the Flood) unrewarded.