Youssef Chahine's Al Ousfour (The Sparrow) escapes the Egyptian censors by being shown at Cannes (the print had already arrived in France) and at same time wins the National Grand Prize back home. The outcome gives credence to the comments of the new SRF president, Costa Gavras, for whom "censorship, the pressures exerted by trusts and interest groups, the dictatorship of exhibition circuits, have not disappeared..." The Fortnight also screens Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God, though it will have to wait a year before finding a French distributor.
