Egyptian director Ibrahim El Batout’s second feature-length narrative EYE OF THE SUN (EIN SHAMS) took the prize on Saturday for the Golden Tauro for best film at Sicily’s Taormina Film Festival.

EYE OF THE SUN focuses on a taxi driver named Ramadan whose routes through the city force him to compare Egypt’s contemporary decline with its ancient days of splendor.

Perhaps more interesting than the film’s recent honors is the struggle for release in its home country, a far too common story exposing the nightmare of bureaucratic obstacles that filmmakers face when trying to secure distribution in Egypt.

Read the full Daily News article here.

Photo: Director Ibrahim El Batout (right) receiving the Golden Tauro award in Italy. (Daily News Egypt)

An interview with French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche is featured in this week’s London edition of Time Out. The filmmaker’s past films include LA FAUTE A VOLTAIRE and L’ESQUIVE and he has garnered numerous awards for his latest feature LA GRAIN ET LE MULET. (Which in the past has been translated to “THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN” but is now apparently “COUSCOUS.” Much catchier, I say).

COUSCOUS was the winner of four Césars (France’s Oscars) including best picture, and winner of the 2007 FIPRESCI and Special Jury prizes at the Venice Film Festival. The film is a minutely detailed, sharply observed portrait of the immigrant generation contending with its French-born offspring and the dominant culture in a time when they are no longer the freshest émigrés off the boat.

Plot summary and review here.

The TIME OUT interview.

Two countries with minimal experience in film production have recently announced significant efforts in the production of bio-pics for international audiences.

Libyan president Moammar Gaddafi has written and financed the film, “Dhulm” (Years of Torment) about the Libyan revolutionary leader Omar Mukhtar. The English-language feature will star Omar Sharif and has a budget of $50 million.

The film, “will detail the three-decade Italian occupation of Libya from 1911-43 through firsthand accounts written by Libyans and international witnesses.”

More information on the film here.

On the other side of the Arab World, Qatar has announced its first foray into int’l film production with, “Rumi – The Fire of Love,” a bio-pic of Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet. The English-language film has a budget of $25 million and will be shot by Indian director, Muzzafar Ali.

Full Variety article here.

The 2008 Rotterdam Arab Film Festival kicks off on June 18th with Youssef Chahine’s “Heyya Fawda” (Chaos), runs through June 29th, and closes with award-winning Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Asrar Al-Kuskus” (The Secret of the Grain).

Check out the entire program and schedule here.

Despite the ban on movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, film production in increasing at an astonishing rate in the Kingdom, all things considered.

With a number of films in production in Saudia Arabia, including the pan-Gulf “The Circle” and TV series-based film, “Tash Ma Tash,” as well as Saudi corporations financing the large majority of forthcoming non-Gulf Arabic language films, it seems that with each passing film release, the ban on cinema in the Kingdom is becoming increasingly more ironic.

Perhaps the most striking development of all, is that Saudi officials have announced recently that they are building six, yes six, production studios in Jeddah, “to encourage film production in the country.”

Read the full Variety article here.

The Arab Film Festival co-presents with Golden Thread Productions:

A Comedy by Yussef El Guindi

A theatre actor of Middle Eastern descent considers the leap to film stardom when his agent secures a role for him in a film by Hollywood’s most respected director. Should he pass up the chance of a lifetime because the part is that of a machine gun-strapping terrorist?
June 5 – June 29
at the Thick House, 1695 18th St., San Francisco

Directed by Mark Routhier
Featuring Jessica Kitchens, Kamal Marayati, David Sinaiko, Mark Rafael Truitt* and Cat Thompson*

Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 5 pm, followed by a post-show discussion!

On June 15th
Arab Film Festival Panel: “Arab Representations in Hollywood” post-play discussion

$25 general admission, $15 for students, seniors and TBA members

Thursday performances are Pay-What-You-Can

3 tickets for the price of 2 at all performances!

*member of Actors’ Equity Association

The Arab Film Festival co-presents:
Fundraising Party for Palestinian Film Lesh Sabreen?

Shot in the only Arab neighborhood to survive 1948 and remain in west Jerusalem, ‘Lesh Sabreen?’ tells the story of two young Palestinian lovers as they navigate dreams and dead-ends in their Israel-dominated and controlled community. A three-way challenge (social, economic and political) stands between them and determining the fate of their relationship. For more info, checkout: www.leshsabreen.com.

Come dance, mingle and support a good cause! Help make the voice of young Jerusalemites heard.

June 18 @ 7:30pm
Bollyhood Cafe
3372 Nineteenth Street @ Mission
San Francisco, CA, 94110
(415) 970-0362 – map

Don’t miss this chance to mingle with the film makers of the Palestinian short film ‘Lesh Sabreen?‘ and learn about film making in Palestine. This upcoming party is part of a continued effort to raise 10K$ to help complete the post-production work (editing, subtitling, music scoring, etc) without which ‘Lesh Sabreen?’ cannot be delivered to the screen

Please tell your friends and join us in supporting this Palestinian film.

The Party Features:
* Reception with the film makers:
(The director Muayad Alayan, the cinematographer, camerman and screenwriter will be there)
* World Beats by DJ Emancipacion
* Live Hip Hop by Triki
* Dabkeh Dance Show
* Silent Auction of Palestine Art
* Slide-show, Raffle Gifts & Arabic Food

Suggested Donation: 10$-20$ (or whatever you can pay. Nobody will be turned away).

The Arab Film Festival co-presents with the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival:

All My Life by Maher Sabry
Epic in length but intimate in scope — and certainly the most daring and sexually explicit portrait of homosexual life in Egypt yet put on screen — Maher Sabry’s film evocatively details the tribulations of 26-year-old Rami, an accountant and dance student living in Cairo. Rami’s boyfriend, Waleed, has just ended their relationship in order to get married. His best girlfriend Dalia is leaving Egypt for San Francisco. And his doctor pal Kareem is pestering him to be more involved in the city’s quasi-underground gay community.
As Rami pursues his own romantic path of one-night stands with closet cases and fetishizing tourists, Kareem is arrested in a police raid on a floating discotheque called the Queen Boat (based on an actual incident in 2001, which catalyzed gay Egyptians and a variety of international human rights organizations into action).
All My Life
Egypt, 2008, 150 min
Sunday, June 22, 8:30 PM, Victoria Theatre
Official Film Website

Be Like Others by Tanaz Eshaghian

Be Like Others is a provocative look at a generation of young Iranian men choosing to undergo sex change surgery. Under Iran’s current fundamentalist rule, a homosexual may be harassed, arrested and punished with the most extreme measures possible. Yet changing your gender is not only legal, it’s perfectly acceptable under Islamic law. So, to avoid constant persecution and possible death, a high percentage of the nation’s next-generation gay population opt to willingly sign up for costly, traumatic sexual-reassignment operations. For some, these state-sanctioned surgeries are excruciating ordeals that ultimately aren’t worth the agony; for others, the medical procedure is the first step toward complete, personal liberation.
The winner of a special jury prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and a Sundance favorite, Tanaz Eshagian’s extraordinary chronicle of Iran’s transsexual community follows several patients who’ve either gone through the process or are just beginning their journey to a new life.
Be Like Others
Iran, 2008, 74min
Monday, June 23, 7:00 PM, Victoria Theatre

Frameline32, The 32nd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival is held June 19-29, 2008. For more information, visit the website at www.frameline.org.

http://www.frameline.org/festival

The Arab Film Festival Co-presents:

On June 13, the San Francisco Film Society will begin nightly programming on one screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, bringing the most ambitious, interesting, proactive and masterful films to Bay area audiences each and every night. The Screen begins with the evocative Turkish film Times and Wind, which screened to great acclaim at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival; as Andy Bailey wrote in the Film Festival’s Program Guide, Times and Winds “offers an unforgettable glimpse of rural Islamic life that is at once timeless, out of time and transfixed — like so many works of its kind — by the futile search for lost time.”

The film, the first on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, will play Friday, June 13 – Thursday, June 19. Film Society year-round members will receive $1 off the base ticket price for showings on the SFFS Screen. For complete details on the SFFS Screen and to become a Film Society member, visit www.sffs.org.