The 46th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) drew its curtain on Friday night with an emotional closing ceremony at the Cairo Opera House that left no eye dry and no conscience untouched.
The evening reached its most powerful moment when the hall fell silent and the face of six-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab appeared on the giant screen.
Her terrified voice, pleading for help for three hours after Israeli occupation forces killed her entire family in Gaza, filled the opera house.
What followed was not a film scene, but raw, documented reality.
Festival President and legendary actor Hussein Fahmy took the stage visibly moved.
“That voice you just heard could be mistaken for a dramatic movie moment, but it is tragically real,” he said.
“Hind Rajab begged for life, surrounded by the bodies of her loved ones, until she too was killed. The world watched and did nothing,” he added.
The heart-breaking recording is preserved forever in Kaouther Ben Hania’s short film The Voice of Hind Rajab, screened immediately after as the festival’s final statement.
“Cinema’s ultimate power is to document truth and protect memory from erasure,” Fahmy declared. “Hind and thousands of children like her are not statistics. They are flesh and blood. Their stories will not be silenced.”
The ceremony then shifted from sorrow to celebration as the winners of the 46th edition were announced before a packed house of international stars, filmmakers, and cultural figures.
British drama Dragonfly claimed the prestigious Golden Pyramid for Best Film, with Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn sharing the Best Actress award.
Palestinian powerhouse Once Upon a Time in Gazadominated the night: directors Tarzan and Arab Nasser won the Silver Pyramid for Best Director, lead actor Majd Eid took Best Actor, and the film also secured the Best Arab Feature Award and its $10,000 Award.
Other standout winners included The Things You Kill, which earned both the Naguib Mahfouz Award for Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI Prize, Sand City, whose cinematographer Mathieu Giombini received the Henry Barakat Award for Best Artistic Contribution, As We Breathe, which took the Bronze Pyramid Special Jury Award, Souraya Mon Amour for Best Documentary, The Botanist for the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film, and ONE MORE SHOW, which captured the Youssef Sherif Rizkallah Audience Award.
This year’s festival screened 153 films from 55 countries and enjoyed massive public turnout at screenings, restored classics, master-classes, and the Festival Market.
President Fahmy thanked the Ministry of Culture, state institutions, and all sponsors before announcing a new cooperation agreement with Qatar’s Doha Film Institute.
Established in 1976, the CIFF remains one of the most important and longest-running cinematic events in the Arab world, Africa, and the entire Middle East, a beacon that, this year more than ever, proved cinema can both comfort the heartbroken and confront the powerful.
