Film

"Caravan Festival of the Arts"
My Neighbor

Due to the Egyptian revolution, and the necessary re-scheduling of the 2011 Caravan Festival from 3-12 February to May 12-18, this year’s film night (including visiting actor and premiere film showing) was cancelled.

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2012 "Caravan Festival of the Arts"---early February 2012

Film

Khalid Abdalla

Our special film guest for in early 2012 for the Caravan Festival will be Khalid Abdalla. His next film, In the Last Days of the City, will also be screened.

Khalid Abdalla is a British Egyptian actor who came to international prominence after starring in the 2006 Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA–winning United 93 that was written and directed by Paul Greengrass and chronicled events aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked during the September 11, 2001 U.S. attacks. Khalid Abdalla plays Ziad Jarrah, the leader of the four hijackers on board the flight. He is also on the board of the National Student Drama Festival.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland of Egyptian heritage, and raised in London, England, Abdalla was educated at King's College School and Cambridge University. In 1998, he directed a production of Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness, which ended up having a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival and earned five stars in The Scotsman newspaper, making him the youngest director to receive this accolade. Abdalla read English at Queens' College, Cambridge where he was a fixture on the student drama scene, with performances including the main roles in Othello, Britannicus, and Equus. He was a joint winner with Cressida Trew of the Judges' Award for Acting at the National Student Drama Festival for his performance in Bedbound by Enda Walsh. He later trained at Ecole Philippe Gaulier.

In 2003, Abdalla played the title role in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great on the site of the Rose Theatre. This was the inaugural production of Peter Hall's Canon's Mouth Theatre Company composed of "young actors intent on discovering a new voice for the great metaphorical dramas of the Renaissance".

Abdalla's first screen role was in a 2005 episode of Spooks entitled Infiltration of a New Threat. After United 93 he was cast in the lead role of the film The Kite Runner. In preparation for that role, he spent a month in Kabul to learn some Dari Persian and kite-flying. In 2008, Abdalla appeared as Guy Pringle in the Radio 4 adaptation of Fortunes of War. He most recently starred in Green Zone with Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass. In 2010, he narrated the BBC Series Syrian School.
He also stars in (and is co-producer of) the upcoming independent Arab-led film titled In the Last Days of the City, about the stories of young artists in Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad trying to find their voice under the weight of authoritarian governments and the rise of religious fundamentalism. See www.lastdaysofthecity.com