CAIRO, Khaled Mahmoud (AlArabiya.net)
A small audience of Egyptian intellectuals gathered at The Four Seasons Thursday amid tight security to watch a screening of the award-winning Israeli film The Band's Visit, organized by the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Despite the movie's many accolades it has been difficult to find a place to show it in the Arab world because of a cultural boycott against Israel.
This is the first time an Israeli movie has been shown in Egypt since the signing of the bilateral peace treaty in 1979 and the first time an Arab country allowed the screening of an Israeli movie.
The film, which has won 32 awards, was rejected from the Cairo International Film Festival and the Abu Dhabi Film Festival dropped the film after the Egyptian Actors' Union threatened to boycott it.
According to a statement issued by the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, Israeli ambassador Shalom Cohen expressed his happiness that an Israeli movie was shown in Egypt and thanked the Egyptian government for its support. "Culture is one of the most important ways of drawing people closer. This is sometimes more important than politics."
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The Film The movie tells the story of an Egyptian band that goes to perform in Israel but gets stuck at the airport because of paperwork problems. With no one to meet them upon their arrival they find their own ride but get lost in a small town in the middle of nowhere in southern Israel.
They spend the night in the town while waiting for the next day's bus and members of the Egyptian band and the Israeli residents get to know each other. They manage to bridge their cultural gaps and develop a better understanding of each other. The movie ends with the Egyptian band playing songs about love. It mentions nothing about the wars between the two countries.
Shani Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy in Egypt, said that movie was screened as part of the embassy's cultural activities and added that "the movie aims at bridging the gap between governments in general and not only the Egyptian and Israeli ones."
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The Controversy The Cairo screening was attended by more than 100 public figures—writers, journalists, diplomats, businessmen and representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The director Eran Kolririn flew in from Israel for the screening.
The Band's Visit got the Jury Coup de Coeur at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the Feature Film Award at the Montreal Film Festival, the Audience Award from both the Sarajevo and Warsaw film festivals, the Golden Eye award from the Zurich Film Festival, and Best Actor from the European Film Awards and other—all in 2007 when the movie was released. This is in addition to a number of awards on the local level.
Egypt's Minster of Culture Farouk Hosni reportedly told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that he had seen the film "and it’s excellent” but that it would have been "unadvisable to have the anti-peace opposers burn down our movie theaters because of an Israeli event.”
Egyptian movie syndicates are known for boycotting Israeli movies since they believe screening an Israeli film in Egypt is a form of normalization.
(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid).
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