{"id":613054,"date":"2025-12-05T04:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T04:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/613054\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T04:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T04:07:12","slug":"michael-caine-steals-show-as-red-sea-film-fest-kicks-off-fifth-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/613054\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Caine Steals Show As Red Sea Film Fest Kicks Off Fifth Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSaudi Arabia\u2019s Red Sea<\/a> Film Festival opened its fifth edition this evening with Rowan Athale\u2019s biopic Giant starring Amir El-Masry as boxing champion Prince Naseem Hamed.<\/p>\n

\n\tCo-star Pierce Brosnan, who plays Naseem \u201cNaz\u201d Hamed\u2019s Irish trainer Brendan Ingle, did not make the trip to the event\u2019s home of the port city of Jeddah but plenty of other stars were in attendance.<\/p>\n

\n\tOscar-winning actors Michael Caine<\/a> and Juliette Binoche as well as director Rachid Bouchareb and Stanley Tong all took to the stage for honorary awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tKirsten Dunst, Queen Latifah, Jessica Alba and Ana de Armas also hit the red carpet while Jury president Sean Baker was joined by jury members featuring Riz Ahmed, Naomie Harris, Nadine Labaki, and Olga Kurylenko. \u00a0Naseem \u2018Naz\u2019 Hamed was also in the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tAppearing on stage in a wheelchair Caine was accompanied by his three grandchildren, while his long-time friend Vin Diesel delivered an honorary speech and presented the acting icon with his award.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaine lapped up the attention declaring to whoops and whistles from the audience, \u201cThank you for the welcome. My name is Michael Caine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not my real name but it\u2019s a realistic name. It\u2019s the one that made all the money,\u201d he continued to laughs. \u201cI was born a cockney in London, which is very poor working class, and I grew up to be what I am which is, well, I am not multiple rich, but I\u2019ve got enough money for an evening out, even an evening in\u2026 I\u2019ve been married for 52 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAcknowledging his grandchildren on stage and name-checking his daughters Natacha and Dominique, Caine said his family was now his priority in life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have loads of photographs but none are of any of the movies I am in, it\u2019s just family, because that\u2019s my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m here to get an award which doesn\u2019t surprise me. I\u2019ve won two Oscars \u2013 one with a cockney accent, and one with an American accent \u2013 so I\u2019m not really worried about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe expressed surprise at feted being by the Red Sea Film Festival<\/a> in a place he had never visited before.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve seen it on the television but I never thought I would win anything here and I\u2019ve won one\u2026 I want to thank you for the surprise, because you never get surprises, although you may get a couple of shocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond the celebrity tributes, the focus of the evening was on the evolution of the Red Sea Film Festival as it marked its fifth edition.<\/p>\n

\n\tThursday night\u2019s opening ceremony in the Red Sea Film Foundation\u2019s new HQ, in a burgeoning culture quarter, was a fire cry from inaugural edition in 2021 in \u00a0a makeshift theatre, while the body\u2019s legacy of helping emerging directors has also grown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOver the past five years, the Red Sea Film foundation has quietly but surely built what many once thought, was impossible,\u201d said Jomana R. Alrashid Chairwoman of the Red Sea Film Foundation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s more than just a foundation and more than a festival but rather an ecosystem where filmmakers from across the three continents are not only supported, but empowered to lead,\u201d she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia\u2019s Red Sea Film Festival opened its fifth edition this evening with Rowan Athale\u2019s biopic Giant starring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,77,35720,31995,191202,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-613054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-michael-caine","11":"tag-red-sea","12":"tag-red-sea-film-festival","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115664994093136546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}