Egyptian Star Mona Zaki Reflects on Three Decades of Reinvention as El Gouna Honors Her Career: ‘Art Is About Freedom’

By Essie Assibu

Essie Assibu

Latest

• 10 Films to Track at El Gouna, From Cannes and Berlin Standouts to Rising Arab Filmmakers 3 days ago
• El Gouna’s Amr Mansi on CineGouna Expansion, New Partnerships and Making ‘the Industry Our Hero’ 3 days ago
• El Gouna Artistic Director Andrew Mohsen Puts ‘Discovery’ First: ‘We’re Trying to Draw Attention’ to Overlooked Films 3 days ago

• Comments

The 9th edition of El Gouna Film Festival (Oct. 15-23) may be celebrating Mona Zaki’s past, but the Egyptian film star is far more interested in what she’s yet to do.

Honored with the festival’s Career Achievement Award at the opening ceremony, Zaki, who has already built a career spanning more than three decades, hasn’t even turned 50. Sitting down with Variety on the shores of the Red Sea, she speaks about that prolific career less as a completed body of work than a continuous process of reinvention. That ongoing transformation has required her to repeatedly shed audiences’ expectations of who Mona Zaki should be. “I get bored easily with myself,” she shares.

Related Stories

Taylor Swift's 'The Life of a Showgirl' Spends 15th Week at No. 1 on Albums Chart