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MEIFF 2008 - Day 8 highlights











Day Eight of the Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) on Friday 17th October features Danish disorientation, dark enchantment from Russia plus landmark Egyptian cinema and a moving documentary on famous Islamic singer, Youssou N’Dour. Known as Denmark’s answer to the Coën Brothers, director Henrik Ruben Genz has based his third feature film Terribly Happy on a true story and best-selling novel about a Copenhagen policeman, Robert, who moves to remote Jutland. Described as a ’western-horror’, the film follows Robert as he is drawn into the isolated town’s ’heart of darkness’ and descends into moral corruption. Named as ’one of the 10 directors to watch’ by Variety, 32 year old Russian director Anna Melikyan has already scored the ’Best Director’ award at Sundance and the FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin International Film Festival this year for her contemporary fairy tale, Mermaid. Fusing myth, dream, and warped reality with abundant invention, Mermaid is an ingenious vision of dark enchantment. It’s a whimsical coming-of-age drama, about a green-haired girl, Alisa ’ whose strange powers as a five year old forces her family to move from their rural home to Moscow. Her fanciful and romantic imagination clashes with reality as she grapples with love, modernity and materialism in the big city. Considered a landmark of 1990s Egyptian cinema, director Magdi Ahmed Ali’s fourth feature film Fawzia: A Special Blend portrays poverty-stricken characters whose souls are rich, despite reality proving cruel to them. The cast includes Elham Shaheen (Souq al mot aa) and Egypt’s number one belly-dancer Nagwa Fouad. An intimate portrait of the man who was voted one of the Times’ ’100 most influential people’ in the world in 2007, Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love is produced by writer and director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The film follows Youssou N’Dour as he creates and releases his deeply personal album, Egypt, a musical exploration of Islam and examines the critical and public response to the album in his hometown of Senegal - where it was initially met with resistance - and abroad, where it was highly acclaimed and received a Grammy Award. Delving into what is means in to be a Muslim singer in an increasingly hostile world, the director tells the remarkable story of the artist who has integrated his deeply seated religious views into his art, remained strong in the face of adversity and overcome a number of challenges along the way. For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.meiff.com

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