India to participate in Cairo Int'l Film Fest

India will participate with three movies in the 38th Cairo International Film Festival to be held here next month.
The movies will participate in three different categories in the festival, which will run from November 15-24 during which over 200 films will be screened.
"The Narrow Path" by Satish Babusenan and Santosh Babusenan will be screened in the 'International' competition, while "Half Ticket" by Samit Kakkad will be screened in the 'International panorama' category. The third movie, "Lipstick Under My Burka" by Alankrita Shrivastava, will be shown during the 'Festival of Festivals' competition.
"I welcome the Indian participation at the Cairo International Film Festival as I truly believe that Bollywood and Egyptian Cinema must have even closer links and the participation of movies in festivals in each other countries is one way of doing this," India's Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya told PTI.

A group from the team of each film will also attend the festival to see their productions in competition.
The Indian artistes to attend the film festival this year include Satish Babusenan and Santosh Babusenan, Samit Kakkad, amphitheatre Jaisinghani, Sanjay Memane, Anmol Bhave, Alankrita Shirvastas and Charu Shree Roy.

"I look forward to the visits of directors and producers and the team of the movies and I hope that they will have much closer interaction with their Egyptian counterparts, so that we can get to the next phase of the cooperation between India and Egypt which should include shooting in each other's countries," the Ambassador said.

"I want Indian cinema to come and shoot here in Egypt like they used to in the past and also Egyptian cinema go to India. I would then like to see joint productions," he added.
Rakesh Kawra, Acting Director of Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture in Cairo, said: "We have three participating movies this year. One of them, which is "Lipstick Under My Burkha" has already participated in many festivals around the world and gained great success."
Over 200 films in different categories will be screened during this year's edition of the festival and Chinese cinema will be the guest of honour, Magda Wassef, President of CIFF said in a press conference yesterday.

CIFF, one of the world's 14 most important film festivals, is the only one in the MENA region to be accorded category "A" status by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF).