Tips from the culture desk: Zawya is back! And more

Check out our tips below, but ongoing events include the 14th Alexandria Summer Festival, which this week boasts performances by Massar Egbari, Omar Khairat and Qarar Izala, and Mohamed Diab’s debate-stirring thriller Clash is still in cinemas (read Rowan El Shimi's take on it here and Andeel's take here).

Medrar for Contemporary Art also just opened its international open call for submissions for the 8th Cairo Video Festival — Video Art & Experimental Film, which will take place in February 2017. The deadline is September 30. See here for more information.

Zawya sunday screening + new release

Zawya has happily returned from its summer break with a week of five daily screenings of Matt Ross’s feature film debut Captain Fantastic (2916), which did very well at Cannes this year. It’s a family drama about an intellectual off-the-grid survivalist bringing up his six kids in a US forest.

Zawya also has a one-off Sunday evening screening of Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s absurdist semi-comedy Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (2015), in which a carjacker steals what he thinks is an Israeli car and an easy way to make money in his impoverished Palestinian refugee camp, but things get hairy when he discovers a kidnapped Israeli soldier in the trunk.

Behind Cinema Odeon, 4 Abdel Hamid Said Street, downtown Cairo. See Zawya's calender here. Tel: 01283200888.

Citadel Summer Festival for Music and Singing — starts Wednesday

The twenty-fifth edition of one of the most successful state-run festivals in Cairo, the Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, starts on Wednesday at Mahka al-Qalaa Theater in Cairo’s Citadel. Organized by the Cairo Opera House, it brings together concerts and storytelling performances by local, regional and international artists for two weeks.

Opening night features a performance by 1960s Egyptian cover band Les Petits Chats, who have been performing together again sporadically since a reunion concert in 2010. The first weekend also hosts a folk performance by a Mallawi troupe, Tunisian starlet Ghalia Benali, and Spanish folk singer Mona Burkhard.

August 17 to September 2, performances daily at 8 pm and 10 pm. Tickets LE5, and more details can be found here (in Arabic). For inquiries, call 27390188 or 27360361.

Lost and Found — Friday + Saturday

Theatrical circus performance Lost and Found, directed by Syrian director, educator and activist Hanan Haj Ali and by the Darb al-Ahmar Art School, first debuted at Cairo's Falaki Theater in 2014. It's the entertaining result of a 2013 children's storytelling workshop where they explored personal connections between their everyday lives with the political turbulence in the country.

Founded by Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafi in 2011 to train children and teenagers of the Al-Darb Al-Ahmar area in circus arts and percussion, the school is located in the area behind the Geneina Theater — also previously run by Mawred, before the funding body shut down its Egypt operations and the theater reopened as a private company — and emerged out of the team's engagement with local children through workshops. The students have given several performances in Egypt and abroad, including a performance designed by UK company STOMP, and have participated in Cairo’s circus festival, CirCairo.

8 pm August 19 and 20 at Falaki Theater, AUC Downtown Cairo Campus. Tickets available starting August 13 at Studio Emad Eddin Foundation (18 Emad Eddin street, downtown Cairo) on weekdays from 10 am until 10 pm. Photo: Courtesy of artists