Omani information minister inaugurates 5th Muscat Film Festival

More than 40 films takes part in festival

More than 40 films in three categories have been entered in the fifth Muscat Film Festival, according to Dr Khalid Abderrahim Zadjali, President of the Oman Film Society and President of the festival.

The eight-day festival from Jan. 22 to Jan. 29 was opened by the chief guest HE Hamed Bin Mohammed Al Rashdi, Minister of Information, at the College of Higher Technology here on Tuesday.

The minister later presented awards to celebrated Egyptian filmmaker Tawfiq Saleh, Jawad Sultan and Mohammed Toobi, both from Oman, for their outstanding contributions to Arab cinema.

Another six young Omanis received awards for participation in a competition on documentary films made on the topic of unusual weather conditions that struck the Sultanate last year.

The inaugural function turned out to be an event with a large gathering of dignitaries, celebrity filmmakers and producers and the glitterati. Zadjali said there were no entries from Oman in this festival. He specially mentioned that "we did not want to enter the Omani film Al Boom for the second time in a row."

However, the Omani Film Society was involved in a couple of projects and hopefully in 2008, Omani films would be completed and released for screening." Zadjali said that the films would be screened at the Al Shatti, Al Bahja and Star Cinemas.

The audience was briefed on some 40 Arabic and foreign films now being screened at Al Shatti, Al Bahja and Star Cinema.

Giving details on the three categories in the festival, Zadjali said there were eight films in the Out of Competition category foreign films with three from Syria : The Duped (Taufiq Salah - director), Public Relations (Sameer Thikra) and Dreaming Vision (Waha Al Raheb), two from Egypt: Struggle of the Heroes (Tawfiq Saleh) and Fool's Alley (Taufiq Salah) and one each from Iraq/Germany: Underexposure (Oday Rasheed), France: Les Soeurs Fachees (Alexandre Lechere) and Iraq: Dreams (Mohammed Al Daradji).

As a conclusion, there are 11 Arab films in the competition category and eight foreign films in the competition category, including entries from Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.