'Al gazira', 'Heena' win in Cairo
Pics take National Festival for Cinema awards
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"Al gazira" won five prizes, including best actor for Ahmed Al Sakka and actress for rising star Hend Sabry. Pic, which has grossed $5 million at the domestic box office, is a gangster epic loosely based on the real-life story of feuding drug barons in Upper Egypt.
"Heena maysara," which caused controversy before its release due to its gritty depiction of a poverty-stricken slum in Cairo and a brief kiss between two women, took home the laurels for film, as well as best supporting actor for Amr Abdel Galeel and supporting actress for Hala Fakher.
Director honors went to Mohammed Khan for romantic drama "In the Heliopolis Flat," starring local heartthrob Khaled Abou Naga. Khan's wife Wessam Soliman won the script prize for her work on the pic.
Success of "Al gazira" and "Heena maysara" underscores the recent resurgence in adult-oriented dramas at the Egyptian box office, following years of dominance by family-skewing laffers.
Current boom in edgy fare was encouraged by the critical and commercial success of Marwan Hamed's "The Yacoubian Building," Egypt's biggest film of 2006. It boasted an all-star cast including Adel Imam and a multi-stranded taboo busting plotline that tackled everything from Islamic fundamentalism to homosexuality and government corruption.
Youssef Chahine, the ailing grand old man of Egyptian cinema, walked away empty-handed for his latest, and reputedly last, pic "Chaos."
Saad Hendawy won the prize for best debut or sophomore work for "The Seventh Heaven," a tale of a whirling dervish struggling to come to terms with the demons of his past.
Helmer Nadia Kamel was awarded an honorary prize for her controversial doc "Salata baladi" (Oriental Salad). Pic traces Kamel's family's complicated ethnic make-up, which includes a Jewish grandfather, Italian Catholic grandmother, as well as other sprinklings of Turkish, Russian and Lebanese blood.
Kamel earned the ire of conservative critics in the country for lensing in Israel. The issue of "normalization" with Israel remains sensitive for many Egyptians, even though Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979 following the Camp David Accords.
Despite that, "Salata baladi" has proved a hit with art-house auds in the country.
