The annual general meeting took place on the 5th of July 2019. The association IAFFZ could look back on a successful festival year 2018. A large selection of the films of the festival could then be shown in cooperation with Cinélibre in several Swiss cities until the spring of 2019. The IAFFZ also helped with the major Youssef Chahine retrospective, which ran in May and June 2019 at the Filmpodium Zurich, the Stadtkino Basel and the Kino Rex in Bern.
There were also changes in the board of the association. Evelyn Echle Strahleck and Fabienne Durler have withdrawn from the board for professional reasons. We thank you very much for the great work you have done in recent years for the festival and the association. But we also welcomed new members to the board. Monica Sanz (sponsoring) and Daniel Huber (fundraising). Exciting tasks await them.
Also with the program delegation there were changes. For personal reasons, Sandro Müntener will no longer be in the program delegation team but will continue to support the new five-member program delegation team in an advisory capacity. The program delegation now includes Fabien Merz (head), Alice Johnson (deputy head), Rachida Aharrat, Lili Hering and Kamel Khaled. There is a lot of work waiting for our program team and we are looking forward to a great selection of Arab films for the next festival in Fall 2020.
