by Ahmed Shafiq

HURGHADA, Egypt, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- China has become one of the most important markets in the global film industry, not only for the number of cinemas, but also for importing foreign films, said Intishal al-Tamimi, manager of Egypt's El Gouna Film Festival (GFF).

"China constitutes 14 percent of the international cinema market. This is one of the reasons why it is so important," al-Tamimi said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The third edition of the week-long GFF kicked off on Sept. 19 in Egypt's Red Sea resort town of El Gouna, hosting hundreds of film celebrities and filmmakers. It will screen over 80 movies from various countries, including China.

Al-Tamimi highly applauded the Chinese movies' participation in the festival, especially "Saturday Fiction," which is directed by Lou Ye and starring Chinese actress Gong Li.

"This Chinese film is very important," he said. "It is a very new film that was screened in Venice and Toronto festivals and the GFF is the third festival to screen it."

The GFF manager said he is very proud to have the film in the program of the festival.

"We are always looking for films from China because China has a great cinema industry, great cinema professionals," he added.

"Saturday Fiction," which is set in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation in 1941, competed for the Golden Lion award along with 20 other films at the 76th Venice Film Festival. It is to be released in China on Dec. 7, 2019.

Al-Tamimi pointed out that the Chinese cinema market has become very important for non-Chinese movies, including Arab movies.

"For example, Kafr Naoum film, which is directed by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, raked in 44 million U.S. dollars in profits only in China," he revealed.

However, he said, the film's revenues in the Arab world did not exceed 300,000 U.S. dollars.

"That is why China is very important in the cinema world," al-Tamimi explained.

The GFF, one of the leading film festivals in the Middle East, aims to showcase a wide variety of films for a passionate and knowledgeable audience, while fostering better communication between cultures through the art of filmmaking.

During the festival, which will last until Sept. 27, 12 films are participating in the Feature Narrative Competition, nine in the Feature Documentary Competition, 23 in the Short Film Competition, as well as three in GFF's Special Presentations program.

The festival will also screen 21 films in its Out of Competition section, while the awards of the competitions will amount to 224,000 U.S. dollars.

Speaking about this year's edition of the GFF, al-Tamimi said it is bigger, more organized and, for the first time, some movies will be screened outside El Gouna resort.

"We now screen some movies in Hurghada, which is a big success. The turnout in Hurghada was big; something that we were not really sure of when we made the decision," the manager said, affirming that this will also help them expand to other cities next year.

Al-Tamimi confirmed that this year the GFF has better films "because of the success of the two previous editions."

"Internationally, people in the film industry know where they should come with their films, projects and different activities," he said. "In the previous edition, we had 74 films, but now we have 84 films. We got many films this year easily because the festival has become well known."

He added that the GFF managed to have the best and most recent Arab and international films this edition, stressing that "this is not easy for any international film festival."

"We have the best films of Cannes, the winners of Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo, Rotterdam and Berlin film festivals," he said.

In addition, al-Tamimi said, the GFF has new films from San Sebastian, Toronto and Venice film festivals.

"Now we have this combination of all these good films in one program," al-Tamimi noted, adding that no other film festival in the region has received such a big number of celebrities on the red carpet as the GFF did. Enditem

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