The 46th Cairo International Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday night with a ceremony that blended spectacle and reflection.
The opening ceremony at Cairo Opera House had guests from across the Arab world and beyond walking the red carpet, as Egyptian stars Yousra, Lebleba, Mahmoud Hemida, Khaled El Nabawy and Ahmed El Sakka joined filmmakers and crew members in celebrating a new season for regional cinema.
Festival president, veteran Egyptian actor Hussein Fahmy, opened the evening after the national anthem, framing the event as both a film celebration and a statement on Egypt’s cultural continuity.
Fahmy described the arts as part of the country’s enduring identity, “reshaping its present through the efforts of its own sons and daughters”.
Fahmy also used the occasion to link that creativity to Egypt’s broader human solidarity, citing national support for neighbouring Sudan and Lebanon in addition to its long-standing commitment to the Palestinian cause – most recently reflected, he noted, in Egypt’s hosting of Sharm El‑Sheikh peace summit for the signing of a ceasefire declaration between Israel and Gaza.
Fahmy further highlighted the festival’s ongoing film restoration initiative, a project that is being overseen by both the state and the private sector, which aims to restore and digitise Egypt’s so-called Golden Age films that are widely beloved in the Arab world.
So far, more than 1,400 Egyptian films are being preserved and subtitled to reach new international audiences, part of what Fahmy called the effort to keep cinema “a living record of who we are”.
Culture minister Ahmed Fouad Henno also gave an address at the festival's launch, speaking about cinema’s “power to sustain memory”.
He invoked the story of Tutankhamun’s discovery as a symbol of Egyptian creativity enduring across centuries, celebrating the recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which he said “restores to the imagination its energy and to civilisation its voice”.
The minister called cinema “the art that allows us to live a thousand lives”, and linked it to peace efforts, referencing the Sharm El‑Sheikh summit and the many untold human stories emerging from conflict zones such as Gaza and across Africa.
The festival’s programme, running through November 21, includes international and Arab competitions, retrospectives and panel discussions.
Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan is presiding over the official feature film jury, joined by Egyptian actress Basma Hassan, Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid, and other jurors from China, Romania and Italy.
Ceylan received the Golden Pyramid Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement, while actor Khaled El Nabawy was presented the Faten Hamama Excellence Award, which he dedicated to the people of Palestine, as well as to the late Egyptian masters who inspired him.
Veteran director Mohamed Abdelaziz was honoured with the Golden Pyramid Award for his distinguished body of work spanning cinema, theatre and television.
The opening ceremony also remembered artists who passed away over the past year, with a projected tribute to Nabil El Halafawy, Samiha Ayoub, Lotfy Labib and Suliman Eid, among others.
The ceremony came to a close with a screening of the festival's curtain‑raiser, Brazilian feature The Blue Path. It served as a fitting introduction to the diversity Cairo International Film Festival promises in its expanded line-up of Egyptian, Arab and international films that probe, in Fahmy’s words, “the human story in all its light and shade”.
