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Cairo Film Festival to Screen Internationally Acclaimed Films

A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
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Cairo Film Festival to Screen Internationally Acclaimed Films

A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour

The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) has announced the films that will feature in its 42nd edition, scheduled to run from December 2 to10.

In a press release obtained by Asharq Al-Awasat, the festival’s president Mohamed Hefzy said that this year’s edition would screen the premiers of some of the biggest films alongside award-winning and critically acclaimed movies from other major festivals.

Nomadland, an American drama awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and The Toronto International Film Festival Grolsch People’s Choice Award, will feature as part of the festival’s formal screenings and will not be part of the competition for any awards.

Directed by Cloe Zhao, the film stars Oscar-award winning actress Frances McDormand and is set during the great recession; it tells the story of a woman in her sixties who decides to take a journey through the American West and live as a modern-day nomad.

The Disciple will also be screened without being part of the competition for awards. It won this year’s International Film Critics Awards (FIPRESCI Prize) in Venice. Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane and produced by Oscar-award winning director Alfonso Cuaron, the film tells the tale of a young Indian man who dedicates his life to singing classical Indian music and the challenges he faces along the way.

Two other films that will be screened in the formal section are the German-French film Undine, directed by Christian Pitzold, which won the FIPRESCI Prize, while the lead actress Paula Beer Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin, and Mogul Mowgli, a British-American production that follows the journey of a British rapper of Pakistani origins who falls ill as he is preparing for his first world tour.

Two years after his previous film, Jumpan, was screened during the festival’s 40th edition in 2018, Ivan I. Tverdovsky will participate with his latest film, The Conference, which is part of the international competition.

Gaza Mon Amour, among this year’s most prominent Arabic films, is also going to be screened. A Palestinian French, German and Portuguese production directed by two twins, Arab and Tarzan Nasser, the film premiered as part of the Venice International Film Festival’s Horizons section before it winning the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema Award (NEPTAC) at the Toronto Festival.

Set in Gaza, it follows a lonely older man who is secretly in love with a dressmaker, and as he tries to find a way to confess his love for her, he discovers an ancient statue that changes his life forever.
CIFF had previously announced that it will honor the Egyptian screenwriter Wahid Hamed with the Golden Pyramid Award for Lifetime Achievement during the opening ceremony and that its Cairo Days of Film Industry will support for 15 fictional and documentary projects from 12 Arab countries.

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Varieties

Nearby Sculptor Galaxy Revealed in Ultra-Detailed Galactic Image

This undated handout image released by European Southern Observatory on June 17, 2025 shows a detailed, thousand-color image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). (Handout / European Southern Observatory / AFP)
This undated handout image released by European Southern Observatory on June 17, 2025 shows a detailed, thousand-color image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). (Handout / European Southern Observatory / AFP)
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Nearby Sculptor Galaxy Revealed in Ultra-Detailed Galactic Image

This undated handout image released by European Southern Observatory on June 17, 2025 shows a detailed, thousand-color image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). (Handout / European Southern Observatory / AFP)
This undated handout image released by European Southern Observatory on June 17, 2025 shows a detailed, thousand-color image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). (Handout / European Southern Observatory / AFP)

The Sculptor galaxy is similar in many respects to our Milky Way. It is about the same size and mass, with a similar spiral structure. But while it is impossible to get a full view of the Milky Way from the vantage point of Earth because we are inside the galaxy, Sculptor is perfectly positioned for a good look.

Astronomers have done just that, releasing an ultra-detailed image of the Sculptor galaxy on Wednesday obtained with 50 hours of observations using one of the world's biggest telescopes, the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope.

The image shows Sculptor, also called NGC 253, in around 4,000 different colors, each corresponding to a specific wavelength in the optical spectrum.

Because various galactic components emit light differently across the spectrum, the observations are providing information at unprecedented detail on the inner workings of an entire galaxy, from star formation to the motion of interstellar gas on large scales. Conventional images in astronomy offer only a handful of colors, providing less information.

The researchers used the telescope's Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, or MUSE, instrument.

"NGC 253 is close enough that we can observe it in remarkable detail with MUSE, yet far enough that we can still see the entire galaxy in a single field of view," said astronomer Enrico Congiu, a fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, and lead author of research being published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"In the Milky Way, we can achieve extremely high resolution, but we lack a global view since we're inside it. For more distant galaxies, we can get a global view, but not the fine detail. That's why NGC 253 is such a perfect target: it acts as a bridge between the ultra-detailed studies of the Milky Way and the large-scale studies of more distant galaxies. It gives us a rare opportunity to connect the small-scale physics with the big-picture view," Congiu said.

Sculptor is about 11 million light-years from Earth, making it one of the closest big galaxies to the Milky Way. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

Like the Milky Way, it is a barred spiral galaxy, meaning it has an elongated structure extending from its nucleus, with spiral arms extending from the ends of the bar. Its diameter of about 88,000 light-years is similar to the Milky Way's, as is its total mass. One major difference is Sculptor's rate of new star formation, estimated to be two to three times greater than that of the Milky Way.

Nearly 30% of this star formation is happening near the galaxy's nucleus in what is called a starburst region, as revealed in colorful emissions shown in the new image.

The observations have given information on a wide range of properties such as the motion, age and chemical composition of stars and the movement of interstellar gas, an important component of any galaxy.

"Since the light from stars is typically bluer if the stars are young or redder if the stars are old, having thousands of colors lets us learn a lot about what stars and populations of stars exist in the galaxy," said astronomer Kathryn Kreckel of Heidelberg University in Germany, a study co-author.

"Similarly for the gas, it glows in specific bright emission lines at very specific colors, and tells us about the different elements that exist in the gas, and what is causing it to glow," Kreckel said.

The initial research being published from the observations involves planetary nebulae, which are luminous clouds of gas and dust expelled by certain dying stars. Despite their name, they have nothing to do with planets. These nebulae can help astronomers measure the precise distances of faraway galaxies.

The researchers marveled at the scientific and aesthetic value of the new view of Sculptor.

"I personally find these images amazing," Congiu said. "What amazes me the most is that every time I look at them, I notice something new - another nebula, a splash of unexpected color or some subtle structure that hints at the incredible physics behind it all."