Ola Moheb 
Thursday the 20th of the current month witnessed the opening ceremony of the long waited El Gouna Film Festival 2018 in its second edition, or we might call it the "Eastern Cannes" as described by the star Bushra. The festival continues till the 28th of September, and this year, it's gathering a lot more stars and film makers than last year, not just from the Arab world, but also from Hollywood! Concerning movies, the festival presents a whole bunch of extremely important movies that participated in Cannes film festival and other international platforms from allover the world.
Remarkable Attendance of Actors & Actresses:
No doubt, most of the Egyptian celebrities -mainly actors and actresses made it to the big event, whether to attend movies premiered at the festival or to take part in movie judging such as Mona Zaki, Bushra & others. And of course, we can't ignore the special appearance of more than one international star such as Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Dempsey, actor & director Andrew Wilson, Owen Wilson, Clive Owen and actress Desiree Popper. Not to mention that the international model Elisa Sednaoui attended the opening as well as the famous film director Abderrahmane Sissako, and actress Lindsay Sloane.
Important Movies:
This year, over 70 movies from different countries are being screened in El Gouna Film Festival, one of which is "Yomeddine" that competed on one of Cannes film prizes. Other movies such as "The Day I Lost My Shadow" for the director Soudade Kaadan and "Screwdriver" by Palestinian director Bassam Al-Garbawy also participated in international film festival. El Gouna Film Festival offers prizes for the winning films in the following categories: Long movies, long documentary movies and short movies as well as the "Cinema for Humanity" prize. Also, the french cinema had an impact in the festival through the movies: "The Freshmen" and "Ulysse & Mona" that were screened during the opening ceremony of the Egyptian festival.
Exhibitions:
That was an addition to the festival when the administration board decided to hold an ovation of 3 of the most important directors world wide that are similar in both mindset and cinema production and vision. These legends are the Egyptian director Youssef Shahine, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and the Italian Federico Fellini. However, it wasn't enough for the festival to just praise Youssef Shahine's work, that's why the organizing team worked on and succeeded in creating an inspirational exhibition showing the movie posters of most of his films.
Closing:
Friday the 28th of September witnessed the closing of El Gouna Film Festival 2018, where we all saw worthy movies get awards for truly meeting the festival slogan "Cinema for Humanity". Scary Mother won the Golden Star award as the best long movie while Punchline won as the best short movie.
The festival, of course, tributed the Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone during the closing. Also, the GFF team didn't miss to hold a unique interview with Owen Wilson in the TU Berlin Campus El Gouna, where he praised how astonishing the event was and talked about the movies that were being screened.
We've all been following up on all the red carpet looks during the festival, however, there was a look we couldn't just pass by just like that. Rising star, Sarah Abdelrahman, showed up in a dress made of recycled plastic by the Egyptian brand UpFuse. That was for sure a hit that turned even more heads towards such a noble cause that Gouna has been following ever since it was opened.
This year's workshops were more than last year, and we could witness many stars such as Yasmine Sabry and Tara Emad participate in them. Also, Abu performed a new hit from his album that was encountered by a lot of excitement from the audience. Of course, we didn't miss his official Gouna song Talat Daqat where he and our glamorous Yousra made an outstanding performance that was just as magical as last year!
Main Image Credits: Instagram @abumusic
