El Gouna Film Fest Set To Honor Director Marwan Hamed
Marwan Hamed - Eamonn M. McCormack / Stringer
The El Gouna Film Festival (GFF) will honor Egyptian director Marwan Hamed with a Life Career Achievement Award at its upcoming sixth edition from October 6-12, 2023. It marks the first element of the program announced as the Egyptian Red Sea festival returns this year following a one-year hiatus in 2022.
Hamed studied cinema at Cairo's Higher Institute of Cinema before achieving popularity on a global scale. His debut short film Li Li (2001), which he adapted from a Yusuf Idris short tale, was shown at many film festivals and was honored with the Audience Award at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and the Golden Award at the Carthage Film Festival.
Hamed broke out with his 2006 first feature, The Yacoubian Building, adapted from Alaa Al-Aswany’s best-selling novel, which captures Egyptian society in the 1990s and depicts the consequences of its extremes of wealth and poverty. Featuring an ensemble cast, it achieved the biggest theatrical opening in Egypt at its release in June 2006. The film also played in Berlin’s Panorama sidebar and won multiple first-film prizes on the festival circuit including, Tribeca and Zurich.
Hamed's career highlights include the 2014 hit thriller The Blue Elephant, its sequel The Blue Elephant 2 (2019), and the recent film Kira & El Gin (2022). The El Gouna Film Festival said Hamed had revolutionized visual storytelling and set new standards for audiovisual effects in modern Egyptian cinema. Hamed welcomed the accolade and said he was devoting the honor to his parents, the late writer Wahid Hamed and journalist Zeinab Swaydan.
When speaking about Hamed, festival director Intishal Al Timimi said, “The film industry has been greatly enriched by Hamed’s remarkable contributions, leaving a lasting impact and is an inspiration to generations of filmmakers.” Previous recipients of the El Gouna Lifetime Achievement Award Include Egyptian stars Adel Emam, Mohamed Henedy, and Khaled El Sawy; international stars Forest Whitaker, Sylvester Stallone, Gérard Depardieu, and Saïd Taghmaoui; Egyptian director Daoud Abdelsayed, Egyptian art director Onsi Abou Seif, Tunisian filmmaker Dora Bouchoucha, Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, and Lebanese critic Ibrahim Al-Ariss.