"The Last Miracle" Opens El Gouna Film Festival

The organizers of El Gouna Film Festival announced the selection of the film “The Last Miracle” by director Abdel Wahab Shawky to open the seventh session of the festival. This is the second year in a row that the El Gouna Film Festival has been opened by a short film. The events of the next session will be held from October 24 to November 1.

Story and heroes of the movie The Last Miracle The film is based on the story "Miracle" from the short story collection "The Black Cat Tavern" by the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and is an interesting treatment of the relationship between the material and spiritual worlds.

The film follows the journey of Yahya, a forty-year-old journalist, who receives a phone call from a dead person while he is in a bar, which pushes him towards a spiritual journey that ends with a different fate.

The Last Miracle is directed by Abdel Wahab Shawky and co-written by Mark Lotfy, starring Khaled Kamal, Ahmed Siam, and Abed Anani, with a special appearance by Ghada Adel. It is produced by Amjad Abu Alala (Station Films), director of You Will Die at Twenty, which won the Lion of the Future award at the Venice Film Festival, Mark Lotfy (Fig Leaf Studios), Bahu Bakhsh (Red Star Films), and Adel Abdallah (K Films and Shaft Studios). It also received support from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC).

The film director explains his vision for transforming Naguib Mahfouz's story Abdel Wahab Shawky shared his vision of making the short film, saying, “This story was included in the collection that Mahfouz wrote directly after the June 1967 setback, and my personal belief is that we are still in the aftermath of 1967. The state of losing faith in oneself and one’s abilities, and clinging to what is unreasonable, because it is the only hope.”

“Everyone remembers the panic of the Egyptians after the miracle of the Virgin Mary’s appearance above the Church of Zeitoun following the setback, and the tendency of Muslims towards extreme superficial religiosity. The Arab man was defeated and lost hope in a worldly solution, and there is nothing left for him but the solutions of the heavens. Unfortunately, we are still facing the same reality, and we must all dismantle it and address its causes, so I saw it as one of our major issues,” he added.