Turkish director Ferit Kılıç pulled his feature “Dancing Angels” from the Cairo International Film Festival this week and accused organizers of censorship. They had dropped the film from the Critics’ Week competition, then reversed course under pressure from European industry groups.
The festival announced the film’s selection at an Oct. 12 press conference and promoted it on official social media accounts. Management then emailed Kılıç’s team to say the film was out, according to the director’s representatives. The representatives say officials described the film as hostile to the Egyptian state and its audience, and cited “Eagles of the Republic,” another film about an Egyptian star pushed into making propaganda.
The film’s producers escalated quickly. They contacted FIAPF, the international federation of producers’ associations, along with the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs network and Turkey’s Meetings on the Bridge co-production platform, and asked for sanctions against the festival. The request carried weight. FIAPF grants Cairo its top competitive accreditation, a status held by only 15 festivals worldwide. Festival management then re-invited the film and its team. Kılıç declined to hold his world premiere in Cairo and withdrew the film.
In a statement to Variety, the festival said Critics’ Week brings together early-career feature filmmakers from varied cultural, religious and political backgrounds. It said management renewed the invitation after learning the circumstances and regretted that the producers and director chose not to accept. The festival called itself “a space of artistic freedom and open dialogue” and said it hopes to keep a constructive relationship with the filmmakers.
The episode lands in the middle of the 47th edition, which runs Nov. 11 to 20 at the Cairo Opera House and screens 145 films from 64 countries. Organizers have already faced criticism this fall over the official poster and the festival’s refusal to program films made with artificial intelligence.
Cairo has faced censorship accusations before. In 2016, the festival pulled Tamer El-Said’s “In the Last Days of the City” from competition, and management denied political motives. Foreign filmmakers condemned the move and independent Egyptian directors boycotted the following year. El-Said later said the decision reflected the festival’s subordination to the state and censorship bodies, rather than the choices of individuals. The festival operates under the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
