iW NEWS | Locarno Festival to Salute the Late Youssef Chahine

Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, who died over the weekend, will be saluted at this year's Locarno International Film Festival with a special screening of "Al Massir" ("Destiny") on Thursday August 7. Festival artistic director Frederic Maire said in a statement, "This extraordinary storyteller, who ranged across film genres so brilliantly, commanded admiration also for the courage of the positions he took, insisting on the importance of tolerance. Throughout the length of his career, and his rich oeuvre, Chahine displayed a unique combination of political outrage and pleasure in narrative. He was a great auteur and a formidable provocateur." A complete Chahine retrospective was presented at the Locarno festival in 1996. [Eugene Hernandez]