HURGHADA, Egypt, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- The third edition of El Gouna Film Festival (GFF) kicked off on Thursday night in Egypt's Red Sea resort town of El Gouna, hosting hundreds of film celebrities and filmmakers and set to screen over 80 movies from various countries.
During the festival, which will last until Sept. 27, 12 films are participating in the Feature Narrative Competition, 9 films in the Feature Documentary Competition, 23 films in the Short Film Competition, as well as three films 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.
"We have increased the number of films in our competitions this year... we have also increased the cinema workshops and the budgets for young filmmakers," Naguib Sawiris, Egyptian business tycoon and the GFF founder, told Xinhua on the red carpet.
He added that these new additions have made this edition more distinguished than the precious ones.
"In the beginning, people did not know about the festival, but now our guests are running behind us to be invited," Sawiris said.
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.
All the films will have English subtitles, while most of them with Arabic subtitles, and most screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers and members of the cast and crew, in an attempt to connect filmmakers with their audiences.
The festival also includes the CineGouna Platform, an industry-oriented event created to support and empower Arab filmmakers and help them find artistic and financial support.
For the third edition of the CineGouna Platform, the GFF has invited a number of leading regional and international experts in the field of cinema to participate in its various activities.
For her part, Egyptian actress and co-founder of the GFF, Bushra Rozza, said the festival has something new to present to the cinema world to the public as well.
"This year we are trying to develop different kinds of collaboration with many organizations...we have UNICEF and we are celebrating 30 years of the Children's Rights Treaty," she told Xinhua.
"We have also a new phone application where people can see the GFF's program...We have also extended our screenings to Hurghada which means that more audience would watch the movies with us during the festival."
