Seeking to encourage and equip emerging Christian film-makers from Egypt and the Middle East – and allowing them to focus on the issues that most concern them – were the goals of the first-ever Salam (‘Peace’) Film Festival, which has taken place in Alexandria.
The brainchild of Christian TV station SAT-7 and the Evangelical Church of Egypt, the Festival comprised 26 films which were shown and competed for a series of awards.
The Best Director prize went to Samuel Milad for Mariam, the story of an impover-ished girl who, trusting God to supply her needs, gave all her savings to a mission to Africa at her church. Ramy Mourad’s movie Pandemic won the Audience Award and Marathon, by Ebram Kamel, was awarded the Special Jury Award.
Although there were no cash prizes offered, a key aim of the Festival was to encourage the region’s Christian media talent and to provide opportunities to demonstrate their creativity to Christian channels and production houses, giving them ways into the media industry.
Well-known figures from Egyptian TV and cinema took part, along with other professionals from SAT-7 and other Christian production houses. They acted both as judges and in leading seminars and question & answer sessions around creativity and the needs and challenges of media production.
SAT-7 director and producer Maggie Morgan, an award-winning documentary film-maker, was a Festival panelist. She commented: ‘Meeting people working in the field is always enriching. This exchange of life stories and creative experiences widens all our scopes.
‘Attending this conference heightened my awareness for the need for authentic storytelling – art as a tool for honesty, empathy and bridging understanding.’
- The Evangelical Church of Egypt has 414 congregations and about 250,000 members. It has a seminary in Cairo and established the country’s first primary school for girls. A steady trickle of Orthodox and Catholic Christians are joining the denomination.
