Saba Mubarak and Khaled Abol Naga @ Cinéma Arabe

Cinéma Arabe is proud to welcome five guests from the international film industry during this year’s festival. Film directors Mohamed Amin (Egyptian Maidens), Mohamed Diab (6 7 8) and Hesham Issawi (Cairo Exit) will attend the festival for a few days and will answer the audience’s quesitions during Q&A sessions following their film’s screenings.

We are also deeply honoured to welcome actor Khaled Abol Naga (Microphone) and actress Saba Mubarak (Egyptian Maidens, Transit Cities – see picture). They may be largely unknown to Dutch audiences; in the Arab world they are true film stars.
Besides being an actor, Khaled Abol Naga is also a film producer. He uses his status in Egypt to address human rights issues and is a political activist associated to Mohammed el-Baradei. He will share his vision for the future of Egypt and the cry for democracy in the entire Arab world during the debate that will be held on Sunday the 29th of May following the screening of Microphone.
He will be joined by Volkskrant foreign affairs journalist Paul Brill and Middle East specialist Maarten Jan Hijmans.

Saba Mubarak will take part in the debate that will be held on Saturday the 28th of May following the screening of Egyptian Maidens, along with director Mohamed Amin. In this film, she plays a woman in her early thirties who is searching for a husband and experiences the clash between predominating traditional views on female dignity and her own emotional needs. They will be joined by writer Naema Tahir, who addresses a similar topic in her latest book Bruid van de dood (‘Bride of death’), from the point of view of the daughter of immigrants in the Netherlands.