The Film Festival

Josip Djugashvili, the president of Garbejistan (a tiny republic wedged between Armenia and Azerbaijan), in his desire to improve his country’s cultural image, orders his prime minister to organize a film festival. In due course, there are ten films competing for the festival’s Golden Goat award, and the prime minister reads out to the president a summary of the story line of each film, giving the opportunity to the author, Alec Kitroeff, to exercise his wry humor in describing such events as the loss in a tsunami by Indonesian anthropologist Wam Bang Tenku Mam of the Egyptian mummy he was working on; the murder of Boutros Boutros Habibi, the exiled leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, in a British country mansion by Fatima Falafel and her brothers; the longing by a young nun of having her “marriage” to Jesus Christ consummated; the appeal by Poveretto Minestrono, a Miami pasta manufacturer, to Mafia boss Constipato Contralto to rescue his daughter from the hands of low-life kidnapper Spermatozo Spumante; the failure by the elder ugly sister to capture the heart of Prince Charming because of her big feet; and a few more guaranteed to bring a laugh or at least a happy smile to the reader.