In the Red Sea resort of El Gouna, some 12 miles north of Hurghada, Egyptian and foreign filmmakers are attending the first edition of El Gouna Film Festival, which kicked off on Sept. 22 and will run for a week.

The opening ceremony of the new festival included the Egyptian and Arab world premiere of “Sheikh Jackson,” Egypt’s 2018 Oscar nominee for best foreign language film.

The film revolves around Sheikh Khaled, a cleric who lives an austere life with few pleasures. Sporting a long beard and dressed in a galabiya, a traditional long garment, he is so obsessed with death and the afterlife that he sleeps under his bed to remind himself of the inevitability of death. He also expects his family to lead a conservative life, aggressively telling his wife to wear the hijab and scolding his young daughter when he catches her watching a Beyoncé video on the internet. In one of the memorable scenes, he lectures his daughter about the singer, referring to her songs and her performances as “dirty dancing” and “Satanic music.”

But for all his conservatism, Sheikh Khaled has a weak spot, which is revealed when he learns pop legend Michael Jackson is dead. Then we get a glimpse of the once rebellious Khaled as a teenager in the early 1990s. Khaled, a big fan of Jackson, strives to imitate him — in hairstyle and by moonwalking — which earns him his nickname "Jackson" from his friends and the anger of his father, who thinks his son is effeminate.