Gaza Mon Amour Reaps Two Awards at Cairo International Film Festival

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Winner of the Shared Best Arab Film Award and a Special Mention

Gaza Mon Amour Reaps Two Awards at Cairo International Film Festival


Palestinian film Gaza Mon Amour by twin brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser has won a Special Mention and Best Arab Film Award, shared with We Are from There film, at the 42 nd Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) within the International Competition, where it landed its Arab World Premiere. The film had 3 full-house screenings during the festival, witnessing the attendance of a massive number of public figures and superstars.

Landing its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, within Horizons Competition, Gaza Mon Amour has landed its premiere in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it reaped the NETPAC award and was described by the festival’s jury committee as “a heartwarming, thought-provoking and poetic tale of unspoken emotions portraying daily life.”

Gaza Mon Amour has also previously received the Silver Spike and the Miguel Delibes Award for Best Screenplay at Seminci – Valladolid International Film Festival. The film has also won its star Salim Daw the Best Actor Prize at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works as a dressmaker at the market. Finally determined to propose, Issa discovers an ancient statue of Apollo in his fishing net, which he decides to hide at home. When local authorities find out about this mysterious treasure, troubles begin for Issa.

Directed by the Nasser brothers, Gaza Mon Amour features an all-star cast, including Salim Daw, Hiam Abbass, Maisa Abdelhadi, Georges Iskandar, Hitham Al Omari, and Manal Awad. The film was officially selected at the 2019 Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The film is produced by the French company Les Films du Tambour (delegate producer), in a France- Germany-Portugal- Palestine-Qatar co-production with Riva Filmproduktion (Germany), ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel in collaboration with ARTE (Germany), Ukbar Filmes (Portugal), Made in Palestine Project (Palestine), and Jordan Pioneers. The film is distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions.

Twins Tarzan and Arab Nasser were born in Gaza, Palestine, in 1988. They studied Fine Arts at Al- Aqsa University and became passionate about cinema and paintings. They directed Condom Lead (15 min, 2013), which got selected in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2013. Their first feature film, Dégradé (85 min, 2014), made its world premiere at Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique 2015, and also screened at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Gaza Mon Amour is their second feature-film.