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Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s absurdist social satire “Feathers,” in which the good-for-nothing husband of a woman with three children is turned into a chicken, is the big winner of the sixth edition of the Critics’ Awards for Arab Films.The biting black comedy, winner of last year’s Cannes Critics’ Week prize, scooped best film, director and screenplay at the prizes organized by Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (ACC) and voted on by 167 film critics from 68 countries, who viewed the films on Festival Scope.Nominees are chosen among Arab-language films that premiered on the festival circuit outside of the Arab world in 2021. The awards were announced on Sunday in Cannes.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian filmmaker Amir Ramses, who has tackled controversial social and political themes including pedophilia in works such as “Curfew” and the doc “Jews of Egypt,” has been appointed director of the Cairo Film Festival. The news that Ramses will head Cairo, which is the grande dame of Arab film events, follows shortly after prominent producer Mohamed Hefzy stepped down as Cairo fest president earlier this month.Hefzy was replaced as fest president by veteran Egyptian actor Hussein Fahmy, 81, a local megastar, who is taking over the event’s presidency for the second time after a first term between 1998 to 2001. Ramses, who was previously artistic director of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival between 2017 to 2021, is now expected to take on a broader role at Cairo extending beyond artistic director into a general manager position.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian producer, director, writer and mentor Marianne Khoury is being honored with the Legion of Honor, France’s highest prize.Khoury, who is the niece of late great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, is a managing partner in prominent Cairo-based Misr International Films, which Chahine founded. She has directed several documentaries, most recently “Let’s Talk,” which premiered at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam in 2019 and interweaves a treasure trove of archive material with cinematic conversations between four women from different generations in her family.Besides having worked closely with Chahine, who was one of Arab cinema’s leading lights, Khoury –– who holds economic degrees from Cairo and Oxford Universities –– has shepherded some 30 Arab films and docs, many of which are centered around themes of identity, memory, marginalization and womanhood, and launched Zawya, which is Egypt’s first art house cinema circuit.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy’s production shingle Film Clinic –– at Venice with “Amira,” Mohamed Diab’s drama about Palestinian children conceived behind bars with smuggled sperm –– is getting a financial boost that will triple its resources just as two new film and TV projects go into production.Film Clinic is having an outstanding festival presence this year.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian heart surgeon-turned-satirist Bassem Youssef left Egypt in 2014 and relocated to the U.S. after his megahit show “El Bernameg” (“The Program”), on which he snarked at top pols of all stripes, became too dangerous to produce under the country’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.Youssef has since kept busy stateside.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEgyptian director Mayye Zayed, who studied film and documaking at Wellesley and MIT, spent four years following the main character of her female empowerment doc, “Lift Like a Girl,” Zebiba (which means “raisin” in Arabic), who at age nine entered former Olympic athlete Captain Ramadan’s weightlifting training camp on a vacant Alexandria lot.