Gaza solidarity runs through El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt - but was it 'performative'?

Symbolic expressions of solidarity with Gaza punctuated the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, which ran for a week until Thursday.

This year's run of the festival, which takes place in the Red Sea resort of El Gouna, was meant to happen in October.

However, it was twice postponed in light of Israel's onslaught on Gaza, which began on 7 October and has so far killed more than 20,000 people in the Palestinian territory.

Organisers announced in November that a special edition of the festival would run the next month, complete with a special program for Palestinian cinema in collaboration with the Palestine Film Institute.

Palestinian-Chilean musician Elyanna sang at the festival's opening ceremony, giving an emotionally charged performance of 'Olive Branch' - a song she had written in response to the devastation being wrought in Gaza. Opening ceremony attendees were told in their invites to adhere to a "sober" dress code.

The festival also hosted a fundraiser night to raise money for the Egyptian Red Crescent's relief efforts for Gaza.

During the festival's run, some actresses bore messages on their hands or arms calling for an end to the onslaught, a move we saw actor Khalid Abdulla pull at a promotional event for the Netflix series 'The Crown'.

At the opening ceremony, Austrian-Egyptian actress Amira El Sayed had the messages 'End Genocide' and 'End Occupation' written on her hands and arms.

At a premiere a few days later, Yasmine Al Massri, an actress of Palestinian descent, had the message 'Free Gaza' written on the palms of her hands, while she wore a black-and-red Palestinian thobe.

Other festival attendees wore kuffiyehs, or other items of clothing adorned with symbols of Palestinian liberation.

While the festival took place, Egypt was helping Israel maintain a near-total closure of the Rafah border crossing, preventing Palestinians facing intensive Israeli bombardment from leaving Gaza and desperately needed food, water, medicine and other essentials from entering.

Only a trickle of aid has been allowed into Gaza, and a fraction of Palestinians have been able to cross into Egypt, mostly to receive care at hospitals.

With this in mind, some observers of events at the festival questioned whether the gestures seen were substantial - or simply "performative".