Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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Vertical Film Festival Revart Opens Submissions to Egyptian Filmmakers

Set to host its second edition in November, the Middle East’s first vertical film festival is now accepting submissions.

Yahia Dabbous

Do you remember when early 2000’s dads would boast about their ultra-widescreen plasma TVs, and when cinema screens appeared wastefully underutilised with movies taking an annoyingly super-wide format? Well, with the onset of the smartphone and our intuitively portrait-based form of shooting, as well as the natural design arrangement of social media platforms, the era of the widescreen is facing growing competition.


Revart Film Festival (RFF), Egypt and the Middle East’s first vertical film festival, seeks to tap into a new form of storytelling for the second year in a row, and it has announced that it is now accepting submissions from budding filmmakers in Egypt and across the Middle East. Creating a vertical cinematic experience, the region’s first-of-its-kind festival seeks to empower filmmakers by exploring the contemporary aspect ratio of content creation.


RFF’s first edition - which took place online in May 2020 amidst the institutional cultural vacuum caused by COVID-19 venue closures - featured 10 films, all recorded on mobile phones or cameras in vertical aspect ratio.


Now, with its second edition set to take place between November 3rd and November 6th at Downtown Cairo’s historic Cinema Radio venue, the region’s prospective filmmakers (or simply anyone with a phone) are invited to present their submissions by the September 18th deadline date.


Works can be submitted on the festival’s website at revartfilmfestival.com/submission.