SRIFF 2026: A century of animation, bridging two ancient civilizations

At the 13th Silk Road International Film Festival in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Egyptian animator and filmmaker Mohamed Ghazala sat down with CGTN's Zhang Meng to talk about a remarkable year for animation – 100 years since German animator Lotte Reiniger's "The Adventures of Prince Achmed," the first feature-length animated film made by a woman, and 90 years since the first Egyptian animation.

With 2026 marking 70 years of China-Egypt diplomatic relations, Ghazala connected that history to the present, stressing the cultural kinship between two of the world's oldest civilizations.

Regardless of distance and language, he believes, "we have a lot of common ground.

The storytelling in Chinese cinema is quite close to ours, because it concerns the human aspect first."