The Francophone festival has helped strengthen ties between French-speaking nations across the globe, said Louis Blin, the French consul general at the conclusion of the two-week event at his residence in Jeddah on Thursday.
The Francophone week started on March 13 with the participation of 20 countries in various cultural activities, photo exhibitions, film nights, concerts, and literary evenings. It concluded with a traditional food festival.
The 20 countries were France, Egypt, Algeria, Belgium, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Canada, Switzerland, Congo (DRC), Burundi, Madagascar, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Greece, Togo, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Turkey and Cameroon.
The term Francophone refers to people whose cultural background is primarily associated with the French language, regardless of ethnic or geographical differences.
Blin said the links between the countries were not only based on language but also “common values.” He thanked Saudi Arabia for supporting the event, which attracted thousands of people.
He praised the efforts of Sebastien Lafragette, the cultural attaché at the French consulate, and the entire organizing team.
Salah Attia, the Algerian consul general and dean of the consular corps, congratulated the consulates for helping to make the festival a success.
It provided an opportunity for the Francophone community “to get together, share their mutual culture and strengthen relations.” Algeria was also able to display handicrafts, he added.
Lafragette said the event was successful because most of the consulates organized activities over the two-week period.
“It is very important to mention that there are around 50,000 Francophone people in Jeddah. It is a very dynamic group over here. It’s not about the language but the spirit of brotherhood that exists among all these countries. Everyone enjoyed the festival with music, plastic art, cinema, literature, book experiences, sports and food from all the participant countries,” he added.
The traditional food included the Lebanese national dish kibbeh, Algerian couscous, Swiss cheese, Egyptian rice with lentils, and sweets from Turkey and other countries.
On the first night of the festival, French artist Corinne Sauvage sang a tribute to singer Dalida in front of an audience of about 450 people.
Francophone festival ‘strengthens cultural ties’
Francophone festival ‘strengthens cultural ties’
‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance
PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.
In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.
There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.
"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.
"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."
The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.
It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.
Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."
And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.
"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."
