Grants Catalogue 2016 Table of Contents Message from the CEO

Grants Programme Team

Feature Narrative

Feature Documentary / Feature Experimental or Essay

Short Narrative / Short Experimental or Essay Funding Now in its sixth year, the Doha Film Institute Grants Programme is past the Two of our grantees from this year were selected for screening in the 2016 Doha Film Institute Grants big five-year mark, solidifying our core commitment to identify and support Cannes International Film Festival’s official selection, alongside four older Programme emerging talents from across the world, and nurture the next generation of grantee projects, which I think is testament to the strength of our Grants filmmakers. programme, the exciting new filmmakers emerging from our region and 2016 Our goal was to strengthen the foundations of a thriving film industry in beyond, and the high quality of the we are pleased to be able to support. Qatar, and to extend our support to emerging filmmakers from across the Our Grants programme aims to seek out original voices in film, encourage Arab region and beyond. During this period alone, I am proud to say that creative interaction among the filmmakers, and develop a community of we have been able to support 315 diverse global projects from 56 countries, filmmakers around the Doha Film Institute alumni. Selected projects are with over 80 percent coming from the Arab world. These are stories that not also offered creative development support by the Institute’s professionals only represent our voices, but ones that embrace diversity to highlight key throughout the life-cycle of the films. Through the growing Qumra platform, challenges facing our shared global humanity. year-round development opportunities, and support in connecting grantees I am encouraged by the first- and second-time filmmakers in our latest with the practical needs of their projects, we aim to form long-lasting, round of grants who approach these issues with an unequivocal creative productive relationships that will bear value well into the future. curiosity. Their passion for storytelling is only matched by their directorial As we look onwards to our first decade, it gives me great confidence to vision, and it is that unique combination in projects that are challenging, witness the remarkable strides made by our family of filmmakers, who are creative and thought-provoking that we aspire to support. redefining Arab and world cinema, and making their presence felt on the While providing the platform for new cinematic voices, we are also looking world stage. We feel honoured to support them in bringing their powerful to build a culture of universal storytelling with films that resonate across stories to life, and contribute to the development of a sustainable film all cultures. We want to empower talented young people by helping them industry in Qatar and the region. tide over the challenges they face in fulfilling their creative aspirations, and encourage the creation of compelling content. The resulting 58 projects come from 24 countries this year and join our – Fatma Al Remaihi grantee alumni in telling stories that help us understand each other and CEO, Doha Film Institute foster a greater appreciation for the people and the world around us. They cover a broad range of subjects and represent some powerful new voices in cinema. We are especially proud of the high quality of Qatari projects represented, some from established names and others from emerging young talents, and we are delighted to assist them in pursuing their filmmaking ambitions right here at home in Qatar. Doha Film Institute Hanaa Issa, Director of Strategy and Development Grants Team Khalil Benkirane, Head of Grants

Delly Shirazi, Grants Senior Coordinator

Meriem Mesraoua, Grants Coordinator

Wesam Said, Grants Coordinator

Vanessa Paradis, Grants Assistant Feature Narrative

A House in Jerusalem A Kasha Amerli Beauty and the Dogs Bull Shark Cocote Daoud’s Winter Dark Skull Diamond Island Dogs Headbang Lullaby Hitch 60 (Working Title) I Dreamt of Empire iPhone Memory Memory Hotel Multicoloured Bahtan Musk Screwdriver Solo Stateless The​ Maiden’s Pond The Journey The Poster The Silence of the Wind Volubilis Wallay Whispering Sands You Will Die at Twenty Zanka Contact Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative A House in Jerusalem I grew up driving with my father Muayad Alayan is a film director, Co-founded by Muayad Alayan and Spring Grants 2016 through the West Jerusalem cinematographer and producer Rami Alayan, PalCine Productions ‘Bayt fi Al-Quds’ / Palestine, Qatar / , English, Hebrew neighbourhoods of Baq’a and based in Palestine. His directorial is a film production company based Talbiya to get to school in the debut ‘Love, Theft and Other in Bethlehem, Palestine. PalCine Genre: Drama, Fantasy old city. My father used to Entanglements’ (2015), which he started out as a collective of Muayad Alayan Interests: Politics, Psychology, Social Issues narrate stories that painted in also produced, had its premiere Palestinian filmmakers and artists Director / Screenwriter / Producer my imagination how life there in the Panorama section of the coming together to produce their A Jewish American family finds it hard to adapt to their new home in was when Palestinians still lived International Film Festival. own audio-visual collaborations and Jerusalem after they discover the grave of a young Palestinian girl. there before 1948. Today, years It was nominated for the First productions. It soon expanded to after my father passed away, I still Feature Award and has since offer experience and skills to other take that same road, and, like all been distributed in more than local and international productions, Palestinians, I see the juxtaposition 20 territories. His first short film non-profit organisations, of life there today with what once premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand communities and institutions was. It is here that the story of this International Short Film Festival seeking to produce audiovisual Rami Alayan film is set. It explores how the new in 2009 and went on to screen at projects in Palestine. PalCine’s Screenwriter / Producer residents of the Arab houses deal more than 60 festivals. He also projects range from documentaries with the past and its phantoms co-directed and produced the and narrative films to commercials through denial, rejection, cognitive documentary ‘Sacred Stones’, which and music and educational videos, dissonance, distortion and, in won the Al-Jazeera Channel Award and several of its films have won rare cases, acknowledgement. in 2012. international awards. Questions about truth and justice are best answered by children In the hope of fulfilling their life-long desire of living in the Holy Land, a because they are innocent and Jewish American family move to Jerusalem, where they buy a house that was pure. Through the story of a young once the property of Palestinians. Shortly after they settle in, they discover Jewish American girl who has just the grave of a young Palestinian girl in their new garden, which dates to moved to Jerusalem with her family the 1940s. Their hopes for a utopian life begin to crumble as seven-year-old and her discovery of the ghost of Rebecca finds it hard to adapt to her new home, and is increasingly haunted a Palestinian girl of the same age, by the ghost of the dead girl. who lived with her family in the same house before 1948, the film explores the innocence with which Contact children approach one another PalCine Productions before they are corrupted by the Muayad Alayan fears and prejudices of their parents. +972 52 808 9352 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative A Kasha ‘A Kasha’ is an offbeat and hajooj kuka is a filmmaker Led by Steven Markovitz, Big World Fall Grants 2016 humourous love story set in a from Sudan. kuka’s 2014 feature Cinema was established in 1994 Sudan, , Qatar / Arabic / 2017 time of war – but the war is in documentary, ‘Beats of the and has produced, co-produced Sudan and it is happening right Antonov’, had its premiere at the and executive-produced short Runtime: 72 min now. In the Nuba Mountains and Toronto International Film Festival, and feature-length fiction and hajooj kuka Genre: Politics, Satire the Blue Nile region, our lives are where it won the People’s Choice documentary films. The company’s Director / Screenwriter Interests: War saturated with the rhetoric and Documentary Award. The film has award-winning projects include ideology of war and revolution. But been broadcast on POV, screened ‘Stories of Our Lives’ (winner of An offbeat Sudanese love story set in a time of civil war. the people here are also trying at more than 60 festivals and won the Teddy Award at the Berlin to live normal lives – there are seven international awards. kuka International Film Festival in 2015); gatherings and music, romance and also trains and works with young ‘Beats of the Antonov’ (winner, laughter. I find the juxtaposition filmmakers across Sudan. Toronto International Film Festival of big philosophical ideas around People’s Choice Documentary revolution with peoples’ simple lives Award in 2014); ‘Viva Riva!’, which Steven Markovitz very compelling; I want to explore was selected for the Berlin and Producer the collision of these two worlds. Toronto International Film Festivals; and ‘Congo in Four Acts’, which was selected for the Berlinale, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and the Hot Docs Canadian Internationl Film Festival. The company has an extensive Adnan is a revolutionary war hero whose love for fighting and his AK-47 are production and distribution network rivalled only by his feelings for Lina, his long-suffering sweetheart. When across Africa. Adnan is late to return to his military unit after leave, the army commander launches a “kasha” to round up truant soldiers. Distracted by Lina, Adnan is caught off guard and makes a run for it. He joins up with Absi, a lover-not- a-fighter type who is dodging the kasha. Together, these two unlikely friends plot ways to reunite Adnan with his gun – and with Lina. Through a series of wry and humorous incidents over 24 hours, ‘A Kasha’ explores life and love in rebel-held areas of Sudan. Contact Big World Cinema Steven Markovitz +27 21422 0330 [email protected] Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Amerli After I earned my Master of Yahya Al Allaq was born in The Iraqi Independent Film Centre Spring Grants 2016 Filmmaking degree from the New Baghdad. In 2014, he obtained a (IIFC) is an institute based in Iraq, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 York Film Academy in Los Angeles master’s degree in filmmaking from Baghdad. The first organisation in 2014, I returned to Baghdad. With the New York Film Academy in Los of its kind in the country, it is at Runtime: 90 min ISIS occupying the city of Mosul, I Angeles. He has worked as First the forefront of the establishment Yahya Al Allaq Genre: Road Trip assisted displaced Iraqis and met Assistant Director on Mohamed and development of the Iraqi film Director / Screenwriter / Producer many women and children on the Al-Daradji’s ‘Ahlaam’, ‘Son of industry, bringing authentic, unique An epic journey. A daring escape. The story of two siblings who must run. Among them was a young girl, Babylon’ and ‘Iraq: War, Love, God and thought-provoking cinema walk through the mountains and forests of Northern Iraq and escape almost ten years old and all alone. and Madness’. He has directed three to international audiences while ISIS to find their way to safety. Her name was Zainab. I asked her short films, including ‘My Name Is promoting honest storytelling why she was on her own; she did Mohammed’ (2010) and ‘Cola’ (2011), aside from the international media. not answer me and walked away. which won prizes at the Beirut Since it was launched in 2009 by Later, someone told me that she International Film Festival and the Mohamed Al-Daradji and Oday was from Mosul, that her parents Gulf Film Festival. More recently, he Rasheed, the IIFC has achieved had been killed by ISIS, and that took part in the Iraqi 35mm Short international recognition and she was trying to reach Amerli, Film Workshop, where he wrote and acclaim for its work. With various where her only living relative, her directed the short film ‘War Canister’ international co-producers and grandfather, lived. While she was (2013). organisations, the IIFC has produced travelling, ISIS captured her together a variety of feature-length narrative with other women to sell them in and documentary films as well the slave market, but she managed as numerous shorts, which have to escape. I was shocked by Zainab’s received many awards, accolades story; I cannot imagine what she and nominations. Mosul, 2014. Ten-year-old Zainab and her 14-year-old brother, Yousif escape must have gone through. after ISIS militia attack their village and kill their parents in their house overlooking the Tigris. They try to escape by walking to Amerli, the city where their grandparents live. During their lengthy and dangerous journey, the siblings get lost in the mountains and valleys, and find themselves alone without shelter, food or water. Yousif grows frustrated with Zaineb, who is unable to understand the gravity of the situation. Later, they are captured by an ISIS leader, who tries to sell Zaineb in a slave market. Will Zaineb be able Contact to escape from this dark and dangerous situation? Will she and Yousif get to Iraqi Independent Film Center Amerli safely? Yahya Al Allaq +964 772 1672 240 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Beauty and the Dogs Perhaps the hardest thing about Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Since 1983, Cinétéléfilms has been Fall Grants 2016 a rape is for the victim to speak Hania studied cinema in Tunisia one of the leading production ‘Aala Kef Ifrit’ / Tunisia, , Sweden, , Qatar / Arabic / 2017 out loud in the hope of having and in at La Fémis and companies in Tunisia and the their voice heard. Paradoxically, the Sorbonne. She has directed Arab world. Its latest films have Runtime: 95 min nobody listens; instead, they make several short films, including premiered at festivals in Cannes, Kaouther Ben Hania Genre: Based on a True Story, Drama accusations: “You are not a victim; ‘Wooden Hand’ (2013), which had Locarno, Toronto and Venice, and Director / Screenwriter Interests: Identity, Social Issues, Women’s Issues you are as guilty as the assailants.” a lengthy and successful run on have been distributed in several Along with this grave issue, what the international festival circuit. countries. Habib Attia has been the Mariam just wanted to enjoy her night out, but something terrible also interests me is the “second Her documentary film ‘Imams managing director of the company happens. What can be done when the perpetrator of a crime against rape” that is a result the legal Go to School’ had its premiere at since 2007. Working in a context you is also the arbiter of justice? proceedings – a form of institutional the International Documentary of international coproduction, violence. ‘Beauty and the Dogs’ is Festival Amsterdam in 2010 and was Attia develops new fiction and a film made up of nine sequence selected for numerous prestigious documentary projects dealing shots. I feel that this formal film festivals. ‘Challat of Tunis’, her primarily with contemporary socio- Habib Attia, Nadim Cheikhrouha constraint is advantageous for this first feature film, opened the ACID cultural issues. Producers film – it places the audience fully section of the Festival de Cannes in in the action in real time, which 2014. Her most recent film, ‘Zaineb will make for an almost unbearable Hates the Snow’, shot over years immersion in the events of the story. in Canada and Tunisia, premiered in the Official Selection of the Festival del Film Locarno in 2016, won a Golden Tanit at the Carthage Film Festival, and was named Best Documentary at Cinémed. Mariam is a young Tunisian student, beautiful like a flower. One night, all she wants to do is dance in the disco with its shimmering lights, and get to know Youssef, a young man who was staring at her. But something terrible breaks her wings. Three policemen catch her on the beach, outside the nightclub, kissing Youssef. Claiming a routine check, they extort money from Youssef and rape Mariam repeatedly. Despite the trauma and pain, Mariam is adamant she wants to file a complaint before the evidence of the abuse that Contact has stained her body disappears... Supported by the young man she just met, Cinétéléfilms Mariam embarks in a showdown against all the guardians of the set order, Habib Attia fighting for her most basic righ: the right to transcribe in black and white in +216 79 731 986 an official report the facts of the crime that will allow her to prosecute the [email protected] aggressors. Her task is to face the coldness of bureaucracy and the dishonesty of law enforcement. Filing suit will become for Mariam a matter of honour, integrity and tenacity. Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Bull Shark With this film I intend to awaken Mohammed Al Ibrahim’s 2010 Innovation Films is a film and Spring Grants 2016 audiences to a growing trend of narrative short ‘Land of Pearls’ television production company ‘Qirsh El Thor’ / Qatar, Bahrain, USA / Arabic, English malicious greed that destroys any screened at a number of events, whose main vision is to create a notion of a just-world hypothesis, including the Gulf Film Festival, solid film industry that exports Genre: Drama whether cultural or religious, the Doha Tribeca Film Festival and world-class filmmaking. Past Mohammed Al Ibrahim especially in the Gulf region. Behind the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. He productions include the feature Director / Screenwriter An up-and-coming investment banker makes his mark in the Arab a veil of distorted Islamic rhetoric participated in the FEST Training film ‘Lockdown: Red Moon Escape’, region’s most prominent Islamic investment bank, only to find out oozed a dark secret that represented Ground in Portugal. In 2013, he as well as several successful short that he has been caught in the middle of the costliest embezzlement the region’s worst nightmare – wrote and directed the short film films; the company also co- scheme in Arab history. Man’s manipulation of a banking ‘Bidoon’, which was named best produced the American indie title system ordained by God. The short narrative at both the Abu ‘KillCam’. Innovation prides itself on aftermath of this era dismembered Dhabi and Gulf Film Festivals. He creating and nurturing local talent, hundreds of families, sparked an is currently majoring in Film and both in front of and behind the attempted revolution, and led to Media at the University of California, camera, and most crew members Mohamed Al Hamadi, losses in the billions of dollars. The Santa Barbara. ‘Bull Shark’ is his first working with Innovation are local Khalid Al Jaber, tone of ‘Bull Shark’ will be one of feature-length project as a director. film professionals or trainees. We Bassam Al Ibrahim looming paranoia, akin to classic actively contribute to local expertise Producers film noir, with viewers’ allegiances by having interns shadow industry repeatedly shifting to the character professionals on set and placing seen in the best light in any given trainees on commercials, and short situation. Finally, the audience and feature films. Innovation also wonders whether this is the work of conducts scriptwriting, producing a single powerful man, or that of a and directing classes, and weekly ‘Bull Shark’ is inspired by real events that took place during the second wave collective conspiracy gone awry. acting workshops overseen by of economic growth in the GCC, from the late 1990s until 2011. At that time, Academy Award nominee Scander a sharia-compliant standard for private-equity investment banking allowed Copti. for the development of hedge funds to facilitate the infrastructure of mega- cities and numerous other projects in all GCC countries and around the world. When an up-and-coming banker gets hints of foul play from his most loyal investors, he is compelled to attempt to topple a regime stifled by greed, excess and power. Contact [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Cocote I have always been interested in Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias Guasábara Cine was created with Fall Grants 2016 the origin of the violence in my was born in the Dominican Republic the goal of producing films that Dominican Republic, , , Qatar / Spanish / 2017 country – a strange, lurking violence in 1984. He attended the Ibero- capture Hispaniola – the island that is almost silent. When speaking American University in Mexico, the comprising the Dominican Republic Runtime: 100 min about violence or about a crime, Universidad del Cine de Buenos and Haiti – from unique and Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias Genre: Drama it is impossible not to mention Aires and the California Institute of authorial viewpoints, emphasising Director / Screenwriter morality. In my country, I feel the the Arts. After making several short the development of new narratives Alberto travels to his hometown to attend the funeral of his father, need to explore the sources of the experimental films, his feature- and identity constructions that can who has been killed by a policeman. Upon arrival, his family expects values that are driving our society length essay film ‘Santa Teresa Y question Latin American aesthetics him to participate in rituals contrary to his new religion – and avenge at the present time. Where is it? Otras Historias’ (2015) had its world and, hopefully, cinema in general. the death of his father. What is it that we are confronting premiere at FIDMarseille, where it every day? To face a country whose won the Prix Georges de Beauregard, majority has struggled to conceive after which it was selected for the of itself through social sciences Toronto International Film Festival, Fernando Santos Díaz, such as anthropology and sociology, the New York International Film Lukas Valenta Rinner among others, I find it necessary to Festival, the Venice Film Festival Producers open a conversation analysing our and the Mar del Plata International religions – fundamental institutions Film Festival, where it was named in the production of morality and Best Latin American Film. He is values that are always in conflict currently finishing his first fiction with each other and themselves. feature, ‘Cocote’. ‘Cocote’ becomes a platform for the confrontation of these religions, and their attempt to defend themselves. Alberto, a gardener who works in the city, travels to his hometown to attend the funeral of his deceased father, who has been killed by a policeman. Upon arrival, he finds that there is to be no burial, but instead a three-day ritual to mourn and celebrate his father’s death. Now a devotee of the Protestant church, Alberto considers this ritual, with its Catholic and African roots, to be satanic and immoral and wholly against his new belief system. Over the course of the celebrations, Alberto faces setback when his family announces Contact their true desire: that he avenge his father’s death. Overwhelmed, Alberto Guasábara Cine becomes lost in the repetition of small town life, his thoughts confront Fernando Santos Díaz different ideas of God and the notion of murder presents itself as the only +1 809 856 9860 solution that will restore order. [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Daoud’s Winter ‘Daoud’s Winter’ is a film about Koutaiba Al-Janabi was born in Created in 2007 and managed Fall Grants 2016 hope, in which one man decides Baghdad and studied photography by Sabine Sidawi, Beirut-based ‘Khareef Dawood’ / Iraq, Lebanon, The Netherlands, France, Qatar / not to be victim of war; instead, and cinematography in Budapest. Orjouane Productions specialises in Arabic / 2018 he sacrifices himself in order to He wrote his PhD thesis on the producing feature-length fiction and save another’s life. Set during the aesthetics of Arab cinema. He now documentary films. The Orjouane Koutaiba Al-Janabi Runtime: 100 min Iran-Iraq war of the early 1980s, lives in and Baghdad. Al- team is composed of three dynamic Director / Screenwriter Genre: Based on a True Story, Drama, Road Trip, Thriller the film shows the consequences Janabi has directed and produced women – Jinane Dagher, Renata Interests: Identity, Psychology of that meaningless conflict. It several short films, documentaries Rahme and Sidawi. Since 2007, explores the effects of the war on and television programmes. Several films produced or co-produced In war, there are only losers. In life, there is always hope. During the ordinary people, on young soldiers of his films have won awards by Orjouane Productions include Iran–Iraq War, Daoud deserts his army base to return the body of his and their mothers; it does not show for his work as a director and Maher Abi Samra’s ‘A Maid for Each’ deceased friend to his family. front lines, battles and weapons, cinematographer. His feature- (2016), Mai Masri’s ‘3000 Nights’ but rather the internal conflicts, length debut as a director, ‘Leaving (2015), Danielle Arbid’s ‘Peur de fear, paranoia and grief that the Baghdad’ (2011), took first prize at Rien’ (2015), Robert Guédiguian’s Sabine Sidawi Hamdan situation caused for those in Iraq the Gulf Film Festival and a British ‘Une Histoire de Fou’ (2015), Eric Producer who were trying to carry on with Independent Film Award, and was Baudelaire’s ‘The Ugly One’ (2013), their daily lives. The film is about nominated for the Cinema for Peace Cherien Dabis’s ‘May in the Summer’ life and death, about the injustice Award in 2012. (2013), Rania and Raed Rafei’s ‘74: that marred a whole society. One The Reconstitution of a Struggle’ of my objectives is to portray (2012), Danielle Arbid’s ‘Beirut Hotel’ the importance of friendship, of (2011), Jihane Chouaib’s ‘Pays Rêvé’ people pulling together in times of (2011), Maher Abi Samra’s ‘We Were great difficulty. In Iraq, the power Communists’ (2010) and Dima el that holds a nation together has Horr’s ‘Everyday Is a Holiday’ (2009). vanished, and I intend to rediscover The company executive-produced Iraq, winter 1988. Daoud, a young man from Baghdad, is drafted into the this power through hope. Sophie Boutros’s ‘Mahbas’ (2015), war with Iran. At the front, he is assigned a gruesome task at the morgue: Olivier Assayas’s ‘Carlos’ (2010), sorting the arrivals of dead bodies and organising their transport to their final Hany Tamba’s ‘Melodrama Habibi’ resting place. For the “martyrs”, this means the family home; the “traitors” (2008) and Danielle Arbid’s ‘A Lost are dispatched to a mass grave in the desert. Among the dishonoured dead Man’ (2007). bodies, one man – Ali – is still breathing. When he finds the farewell letter Contact Ali wrote to his beloved daughter, Daoud decides to save the man from this Orjouane Productions hell and reunite him with his family. He deserts the army and embarks on a Sabine Sidawi Hamdan dangerous journey to take his new friend home. +961 349 9080 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Dark Skull I wanted to film a story that Director, producer and scriptwriter Founded in 2009 and based in Spring Grants 2016 presents a portrait of the people I Kiro Russo was born in La Paz, and La Paz, Socavón Cine is active in ‘Viejo Calavera’ / Bolivia, Qatar / Spanish / 2016 have met in the mines of Huanuni, studied directing at the Universidad introducing and supporting fresh and of their concerns, not just del Cine in Buenos Aires. He made gazes, new narrative forms and Runtime: 79 min through its themes, but presenting the short films ‘Enterprisse’ (2010), experimental films in Bolivia. In Kiro Russo Genre: Coming of age, Docufiction, Drama images taken from their daily life. ‘Juku’ (2012) and ‘New Life’ (2015), recent years, the company has Director / Screenwriter / Producer ‘Dark Skull’ is an exploration of winning prizes at significant film produced Bolivia’s most celebrated When his father dies, a troubled young man must return to his narrative values with sensory means festivals including the Festival del short films, including Kiro Russo’s Bolivian mountain village and try to find a life working in the mines. at a loss in the darkness. Film Locarno, the San Sebastian ‘New Life’ (2015), which won a Jury Film Festival, IndieLisboa, the Mention at the Festival del Film Festival Internacional de Cine Locarno 2015 and was named Best Unam, the Jihlava International Short Film at the San Sebastian Documentary Film Festival and the Film Festival, where it also won four Kaohsiung Film Festival, among other prizes; and Carlos Piñeiro’s Gilmar Gonzales many others. Russo’s earlier works ‘Amazonas’ (2016), which had its Screenwriter have a very close relationship to his premiere at the Clermont-Ferrand first feature-length film ‘Dark Skull’, International Short Film Festival. which is now in post-production.

After his father dies, Elder is forced to live with his grandmother – far away Pablo Paniagua from the city – and learn to be a worker. His godfather, Francisco, helps Elder Producer find his place in a mining company, and the two end up working together. Elder, however, skips work daily. Francisco grudgingly endures this, and his co-workers mock him because of Elder’s behavior. They also seem to know some dark secrets about Francisco’s relationship with Elder’s deceased father – and Elder is curious to know more. When Francisco finds Elder lost in a tunnel that is about to be blasted, he leaves him there – but because Elder survives, the miners see him as good luck. When the miners have to travel far Contact away, the conflict between Elder and Francisco unravels. Socavón Cine Kiro Russo +591 2241 1766 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Diamond Island There were two main drives behind Davy Chou is a French-Cambodian Aurora Films was founded by Spring Grants 2016 the screenplay of ‘Diamond Island’. filmmaker born in 1983. ‘Golden Charlotte Vincent in 2002. Since , France, Germany, Thailand, Qatar / Khmer / 2016 The first was to film the youth of Slumbers’ (2012), a documentary then, Vincent has specialised in present-day Cambodia, and more about the birth of Cambodian making French and international Runtime: 105 min specifically, their intense yet cruel cinema in the 1960s, and its co-productions, including Patric Davy Chou Genre: Drama relationship with the myth of destruction by the Khmer Rouge, Chiha’s ‘Domaine’ (2009), featuring Director / Screenwriter / Producer modernity in a country that, after was his first feature-length film. Beatrice Dalle; Valérie Mréjen and Bora leaves his home village for the worksites of Diamond Island, decades of extreme poverty, is now His short film ‘Cambodia 2099’ Bertrand Schefer’s ‘Iris in Bloom’ a contemporary playground for the rich outside Phnom Penh. There, enjoying the strongest economic (2014), which takes place entirely (2011); Leila Kilani’s ‘On the Edge’ he finds his mysterious older brother Solei, whom he has not seen growth in Southeast Asia. The on Diamond Island in Phnom Penh, (2011); Chiha’s ‘Boys Like Us’ (2014); in years. second drive was very concrete, was selected for the Director’s Evangelia Kranioti’s documentary and stems from my fascination Fortnight at the Festival de Cannes. ‘Exotica, Erotica, Etc.’ (2015); with Diamond Island, a place under He recently completed the feature- Wissam Charaf’s ‘Heaven Sent’ construction that is the perfect length ‘Diamond Island’ (2016), (2016) and Davy Chou’s ‘Diamond Claire Maugendre symbol of the Cambodia of the which had its premiere in the Critics’ Island’, Aurora’s first Cambodian Screenwriter future. Every evening, thousands of Week at the Festival de Cannes, co-production. Aurora Films invests young people head for this man- where it won the SACD Award. heavily in developing new talent and made construction that is devoid promoting debut directors. of memories and is rising up in the midst of one of the poorest countries in the world. And between these two desires was a wish to paint a picture of contemporary Charlotte Vincent Cambodia, of what is actually Producer Diamond Island is a symbol of Cambodia’s future, a sprawling, ultra-modern happening there, which is light paradise for the rich on the river in Phnom Penh. Like many other country years away from the preconceived boys, 18-year-old Bora is lured from his village to work on the construction notions we might have. of this property developers’ dream. There, he forges new friendships and is even reunited with his charismatic older brother Solei, who disappeared five years ago. Solei introduces Bora to the exciting world of Cambodia’s privileged urban youth, with its girls, its nightlife and its illusions. Contact Aurora Films Charlotte Vincent +33 1 47 70 43 01 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Dogs Violence has always fascinated me. Bogdan Florian Mirică studied Director and screenwriter Corneliu Spring Grants 2016 Not its manifestation per se – that Screenwriting at the University Porumboiu set up Bucharest- ‘Câini’ / , France, Bulgaria, Qatar / Romanian / 2016 is merely a consequence – but of Westminster, London. In 2011, based 42 Km Film in March 2004 rather the psychological triggers Mirică wrote and directed his first to produce cinema, video and Runtime: 104 min along with a particular set of moral short film, ‘Bora Bora’, which was television programmes. The Bogdan Florian Mirică Genre: Docufiction, Dramedy, Satire standards that lead certain people named Best European Short Film company’s first autonomous Director / Screenwriter Interests: Identity, Youth to commit actions labelled “crimes”. in Premiers Plans (Angers, France), production was Porumboiu’s ‘12:08 Set in rural Romania, where the and was selected for the Festival East of Bucharest’ (2006), which A young man from Bucharest clashes with his late grandfather’s law is an abstract, hinted-at del Film Locarno and the Warsaw won the Camera d’Or and Label vicious world of crime in the east Romania badlands. notion, ‘Dogs’ is an emotional and and Thessaloniki International Film Cinema Europe at the Festival de moral labyrinth that has at its core Festivals, among others. Mirică’s Cannes, as well as numerous other a conflict of biblical proportions, debut feature-length script, ‘Dogs’, national and international prizes. perhaps the oldest of them all: man was selected for L’Atelier du 42 Km Film went on to produce against man. The story relies on a Festival at the Festival de Cannes, Porumboiu’s ‘Police, Adjective’ Elie Meirovitz, Marcela Ursu triangle of men, each in a different TorinoFilmLab’s Script & Pitch, and (2009), which won the Jury Prize Producers stage of moral corruption. All three Cinelink, where it won the and the FIPRESCI Award in the are imbued with an aggressive, Award. The film had its premiere in Un Certain Regard section of the masculine pride that will ultimately the Un Certain Regard section of the Festival de Cannes; ‘When Evening lead them to perdition. These three Festival de Cannes in 2016. Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism’ men are only different facets of (2013), which screened in the one character. A story where space, Festival del Film Locarno; the visualised by endless barren fields, documentary ‘The Second Game’ is of pivotal importance, ‘Dogs’ (2014), which had its premiere Roman, a young man from Bucharest, comes to the countryside near the aims to capture a glimpse of a at the Berlin International Film border with Ukraine with the firm intention of selling the vast but desolate decomposing world devoid of any Festival; and ‘The Treasure’, which land he inherited from his grandfather. He is warned by old man Hogas, the humanity; a world that revolves won the Un Certain Talent prize local cop, that his grandfather was a local crime lord and that his “boys”, around a single entity: the self. in the Un Certain Regard section led by the charismatic and cruel Samir, will not let go of the land – or their at Cannes and was selected for smuggling business – without a fight. Roman doesn’t give up and the three numerous prestigious international men clash in a triangle of violence. film festivals. Bogdan Mirică’s ‘Dogs’, the company’s latest co-production, Contact premiered in Un Certain Regard at EZ Films Cannes in 2016. Elie Meirovitz [email protected]

42 KM Film Marcela Ursu +40741047110 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative HEAdbANG Lullaby Time for a day of waiting. Life will Part of the new generation of Launched in 2008, Pan Production Spring Grants 2016 be turned upside down for Daoud Moroccan cinema, writer-director is based in Casablanca and has ‘Dharba Fi Alras’ / Morocco, France, Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 at the touch of a beautiful five-year- Hicham Lasri won critical ambitions of producing independent old child, while his mother and the attention with ‘The End’ (2011), his Arab films and reviving the Runtime: 111 min other villagers await the passage first feature-length film, which Moroccan cinema and television Hicham Lasri Genre: Comedy, Drama of the king as if it were an event showed in the ACID Programme landscape. Associate producers Director / Screenwriter of cosmic significance. Unlike my at the Festival de Cannes in 2012. Rita El Quessar, from Morocco, and A policeman is sent by his dissatisfied superiors to spend a day on a previous films, the unifying thread ‘They Are the Dogs’ (2013) looked Mickaël Clouet, from France, met bridge between two warring neighborhoods, where he is charged in ‘HEAdbANG Lullaby’ is a World at the Arab Spring in an atypical filmmaker Hicham Lasri in 2009 and with ensuring the security of a hypothetical royal procession. Cup victory, an event I experienced way, won 32 awards and acclaim produced his short film ‘Android’ very young and which continues from critics, and also screened in (2011). A few years later, they began to be a happy memory in the the ACID Programme. ‘The Sea to develop feature films like ‘The otherwise blocked remembrances Is Behind’ (2014) was selected for Sea Is Behind’ (2014) and ‘Starve of Morocco of that time, when the numerous significant international Your Dog’ (2015), which brought Mickaël Clouet, Rita El Quessar country was like an open prison film festivals, including the Berlin them to international attention. Producers with very little possibility of escape and Dubai International Film After four years of writing and – except in dreams. I made this film Festivals, and screened at the development, the company presents in order to live this hope, to leave Museum of Modern Art in New York Lasri’s ‘HEAdbANG Lullaby’, a this prison where we were kept in City. ‘Starve Your Dog’ (2015) had comedy about the absurdity of Arab mental hibernation, and also to its world premiere at the Toronto societies and humanity shattered by finish up my examination of this International Film Festival and was fear, subservience and the wait for period and start a new film series. also screened in the Panorama a king who might pass by. From this section at the Berlinale. Together premise arises a poetry of sadness Casablanca, June 11, 1986 – the day of the World Cup. After yet another with ‘They Are the Dogs’ and ‘Starve and hope arises – hope that does blunder, embittered cop Daoud is sent by his dissatisfied superiors to Your Dog’, Lasri’s ‘Jahilia, Here, We not exclude the joy of being alive. spend the day on a bridge between two warring neighbourhoods in order Drown the Dogs’ (currently in post- to protect the hypothetical passage of a royal procession. A prisoner of the productin) represent a trilogy about bridge, Daoud will be transformed by contact with the inhabitants of both Moroccan politics of the recent past. villages. He will learn maturity after spending time with a five-year-old child ‘HEAdbANG Lullaby’ is his upcoming and a mother who upheld her dignity, despite having had her head shaved feature. by the secret police. This apparently normal day made up of absurd waiting, Contact improbable encounters and brutal poetry takes place under the giant shadow Pan Production of a messianic monarch whose passage disturbs the delicate balance of a Rita El Quessar motley population. +212663102107 [email protected] Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Feature Narrative Hitch 60 What forces decide who we are? Sara Al Obaidly started her Spring Grants 2016 Where we go in life? Who we could career as a portrait and landscape become, if we made choices outside photographer. Her work has been (working title) the path well-trodden? This film exhibited in the National Portrait is based on the real-life journey Gallery, London, and was selected Sara Al Obaidly Qatar, UK, / English of my mother and her best friend, by ‘TIME’ magazine’s Lightbox in the Director / Screenwriter who have inspired me with their best portraits of 2014. Storytelling Genre: Arthouse, Based on a True Story, Road Trip stories since childhood. Only now, and poetic imagery are at Interests: Coming of age, History, Identity, Politics, Social Issues, Youth as an adult wanting to understand of Al Obaidly’s work. She prefers more about the world that I live to shoot in real locations using Two mod girls from South East London embark on a dream holiday but in, have I truly come to understand natural light. Her background in end up on the journey of a lifetime, crossing continents and cultures, the significance of their unique, photography has given her a clear and growing up on the road. cross-continent expedition in understanding of people, as well 1963. What strikes a chord with me as human interaction and emotion. Ania Wójtowicz personally, amid the devastating, Based on the story of her 17-year- Producer war-torn climate of the Middle old British mother, who had a East today, is the mass destruction dream of reaching the Middle East, of the territory my mother once ‘Hitch 60’ (working title) will be her dreamed of reaching as a young first full-length feature film as a adult; the place she would later director. return to, to marry my father. While I am deeply saddened that I may never be able to follow exactly in her footsteps, I aim to celebrate this unique moment in history through Two mod girls from South-East London embark on a journey across the medium of film, igniting a continents, travelling away from their peers and the hedonism of 1960s passion for cultural exploration and Europe, into unknown territories in the Middle East and beyond. Maureen and exchange within the hearts and Sherry face poverty, treacherous terrain, lecherous men and a transformative minds of the audience; illustrating education at the university of life while on the road to becoming adults. how experiences shape who we become; and celebrating those Contact friendships which, once built, can Sara Al Obaidly last a lifetime. +974 3337 7824 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative I Dreamt of Empire This story is inspired by loss in my Kasem Kharsa is an Egyptian- Founded in 2009 and based in Spring Grants 2016 own family. During the 1956 War, American filmmaker and visual Hamburg and Berlin, Beleza Film ‘Hilimt Bimbritoriya’ / Egypt, Germany, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 my grandfather received news that artist based between the Middle is composed of Jessica Landt and his son, an Egyptian army officer, East and the USA. His films are Falk Nagel. We produce films and Runtime: 90 min had been killed in the Sinai by the inspired by his own fragmented past transmedia projects with a focus on Kasem Kharsa Genre: Drama Israeli army. He suffered a stroke and are centred around memory, personal, character-driven stories. Director / Screenwriter and was never quite the same – it identity and survivorship. His In 2010, Beleza Film presented An Egyptian professor travels back and forth through time in an was as if he had lost a part of work has been supported by both the film workshop One Day in the attempt to save his only son and reclaim the past. himself out in that desert. ‘I Dreamt regional and international funding West Bank for 10 young filmmakers of Empire’ is also a story about a bodies, and he is a fellow of the in Palestine in co-operation with father who has lost his beloved Rawi Lab, the Sundance Directors/ the Goethe-Institut Ramallah. The son, but here he has the unique Writers Lab, and Binger Filmlab. company produced Eva Pervolovici’s opportunity to do something about short film ‘Little Red’ (2011), which it. This film intentionally starts off was nominated for the Berlin Today Alice Ormieres, Jessica Landt, with two natural enemies pitted Award, and co-produced Ali Aydin’s Falk Nagel against one another, and could ‘Küf’ (2012), which had its premiere Producers easily become a grand political at the Venice International Film allegory. But as the story continues Critics’ Week and won the Lion of we learn that Musa’s greatest the Future – Luigi De Laurentis adversary is not his Israeli double; Award for a Debut Film. In 2014, rather, it is himself. ‘I Dreamt of Christian Mertens’s ‘Peter Nagel’, a Empire’ is ultimately about a man documentary about the painter, was , 1980. Musa, a brilliant Egyptian professor, cannot move past the coming to terms with what he has released in cinemas, and 2015 saw grief of losing his only son, Yusuf, an officer who died fighting the Israelis in lost, learning to surpass his state of the premiere of Cosima Lange’s 1956. Musa has been developing a method to travel through time in order victimhood and grief. ‘Hello I Am David’, a documentary to save his son from death. He succeeds and wakes up during the war – but about Australian pianist David unexpectedly finds himself in the body of an Israeli soldier named Ben. It’s as Helfgott. Beleza Film’s current if Musa has woken up in a nightmare. While Musa looks for his son, Ben takes production and development slate over Musa’s life in 1980s Cairo. Musa increasingly loses his grip on his own includes Mariana Jukica’s ‘Coke. identity. Should he stay in the present and reclaim his life, or return to 1956 Champagne.&Cigarettes.’ and ‘Zoe’s to complete his mission? List’, Kasem Kharsa’s ‘I Dreamt of Contact Empire’, Lena Liberta’s ‘Play with Beleza Film Friends’ and Anna Lott’s ‘Devilish Jessica Landt Christmas’. +49 40 6688 4778 [email protected] Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Feature Narrative iPhone Memory By examining events through the Mahdi Ali Ali is a Qatari filmmaker Fall Grants 2016 eyes of a juvenile, and setting this who is charged with the training ‘Thakirat Al iPhone’ / Qatar / Arabic, French feature away from the ground zero and education of filmmakers. Since of today’s Syrian tragedy, I hope to joining the Doha Film Institute, Genre: Docufiction approach this emotional issue from he has successfully worked to Mahdi Ali Ali Interests: Social Issues a fresh perspective. The simplicity of provide filmmakers in Qatar with Director / Screenwriter the narrative structure is designed comprehensive learning initiatives In Paris, a Frenchman battles cancer while his wife wants an to allow the audience to grasp the led by the industry’s major players. abortion; a Romani girl looks for someone to adopt her sister; a Syrian parallels between the experiences He is the executive producer and immigrant boy tries to survive by acting in the cinema. of the characters in the Champs supervisor for more than 30 short Elysées. My vision for the aesthetic films that have been produced by is inspired by the , the Institute. He holds an MFA from in particular the work of Jean-Luc EICAR, the International Film School Godard. The cinematography will of Paris, and has made short films be inflected and interpretative including ‘Champs Elysées, I Love throughout, and include flights of You’ (2009) and ‘The Gulf Habibi’ surrealism to signal that this is a (2011), as well as others for Al symbolic exploration of the tragedy Jazeera Documentary Channel and rather than a factual representation. Al Jazeera Children’s Channel.

This docu-fiction uses the device of a stolen iPhone to depict the struggles of several Parisians, both born-and-bred and immigrants, whose layered gazes generate a map of the multi-faceted French capital. He discovers images of the owner and his pregnant wife preparing to welcome their child into their world. In a teenage gypsy girl’s hands, the iPhone captures snaps of her bohemian family’s lifestyle in Paris – but then the phone is stolen again. Now it is in the possession of a teenage Syrian refugee, who plunges us into his universe as he documents his wanderings around the arrondissements with Contact spontaneous images of himself and those he meets along the way. These Mahdi Ali Ali photos and short videos unveil the mysterious lives of the people of Paris, as +974 5553 6063 well as the refugees who have settled in Paris to find a better life. [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Memory Hotel November 1991, an anarchic time in Heinrich Sabl grew up in the Founded in 1987 by French producer Fall Grants 2016 East Germany. After a 46-year-long former East Germany in the Philippe Bober, Coproduction Office Germany, France, Qatar / German / 2018 presence, the Red Army departs 1960s, in a small industrial town produces and sells bold and award- the country. I stroll through an close to the Polish border, where winning films by directors with Runtime: 95 min abandoned Russian military airport he escaped the strictures of the strong personal vision, maintaining Heinrich Sabl Genre: Animation, Drama near Berlin with my girlfriend. world by immersing himself in long-lasting working relationships Director / Screenwriter / Producer Interests: History That walk was fascinating, but a the world of theatre. He settled with groundbreaking European few years were to pass before the in East Berlin during the mid-80s directors Roy Andersson, Thomas In a Red Army hotel in post-World War II Germany, the orphan Sophie enthusiasm I felt gelled into an idea. and started directing animated Clay, Michelangelo Frammartino, grows up. She marries a paratrooper before escaping with another ‘Memory Hotel’ contains precise short films, which were screened Jessica Hausner, Ruben Östlund and man. An emotional journey through European history. hints about its context – from the in key film festivals including the Ulrich Seidl. Coproduction Office’s end of World War II until the time of Annecy International Animated international sales company is German Reunification – yet in terms Film Festival, the Clermont- one of Europe’s best sales entities, of space, the story is set in a hotel Ferrand International Short Film differentiating itself through Philippe Bober that could be any hotel anywhere Festival and in competition at the both its outstanding catalogue Producer in the world. The protagonist’s Berlin International Film Festival, of carefully chosen gems and the main endeavour is to break out winning several significant film and broad exploitation of its films. of the hotel into a new world that animation awards. Most of his films In the field of film production, holds the promise of salvation. This have been broadcast on German Coproduction Office is home to story is rooted in a quite classical television and on ARTE. Currently, three companies – Essential (Berlin), narrative structure. I have then put Sabl is considered one of the best Parisienne (Paris) and Coproduction a lot of energy into bringing life to stop-motion animation directors. Office (Copenhagen) – with which the “dead” material of the puppets, Philippe Bober has worked as a making them as credible as possible producer on 30 films. Nine of these Germany, 1945. World War II is nearing its climactic end. Five-year-old Sophie in order to hold the spectator were selected for competition at and her parents are refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army. They hide spellbound until the final frame. the Festival de Cannes, five for in a hotel, where they encounter Nazi officer Scharf and Hitler Youth member competition at the Venice Film Beckmann. As the Russians come closer, Sophie falls into a lift and is knocked Festival, two were in competition unconscious. Meanwhile, Scharf accidentally kills Sophie’s mother and at the Berlin International Film Wassily, a paratrooper, kills her father. Time passes and teenage Sophie works Fesitival, and seven appeared in for Soviet soldiers as a kitchen maid in the hotel. Food sometimes disappears, the Un Certain Regard section at Contact but Sophie finds the culprit: Beckmann, who has been hiding in a corridor Cannes. Coproduction Office beneath the hotel since the war ended. As an adult, Sophie reluctantly Philippe Bober marries Wassily and develops a relationship with Beckmann. Decades go +33 1 56 02 60 00 by; the Russians leave and Scharf takes over the hotel. Sophie convinces [email protected] Beckmann to leave, and the pair head for the North Sea, turning their backs on the hotel and its memories. Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Multicoloured Bahtan ‘Multicoloured Bahtan’ is about Nermeen Salem is a filmmaker Based in Alexandria, Rufy’s Film Fall Grants 2016 emotions: what they are, how we and a co-founder of Rufy’s Films Company is an independent film ‘Bahtan BelAlwan’ / Egypt, Qatar / Arabic control them and how much we Company in Alexandria. She studied production house that focuses need them. I have worked with filmmaking at the Jesuit Filmmaking heavily on the quality and the Runtime: 90 min children for 10 years as a teacher, Workshop, and Theology and process of making a film, and not Nermeen Salem Genre: Animation, Children, Comedy, Fantasy and if there’s anything that can Filmmaking at the University of St. only on its commercial value. Our Director / Screenwriter / Producer define and summarise children, it Thomas, Minnesota, as a Fulbright main motivation is our passion for Emotionless Bahtan meets hyperactive Felfella and together they is emotions. Working closely with Scholar. She worked as a primary the filmmaking process and our save the world from losing its emotions. children made me realise that schoolteacher for 10 years and drive to learn. they have become obsessed with has written and directed several the way they look, and that they children films, as well as conducting lose their childhood too early. This filmmaking workshops for children film shows children how to value at schools, institutions and centres, their emotions and how to be able which resulted in several short to choose things based on their children’s films. preferences rather than on brands.

Emotionless Bahtan meets hyperactive Felfella and together they discover the secrets behind Bahtan’s leather bag, and why he is devoid of feelings. They fight About Ghateet – a failed writer – who steals people’s emotions in order to create his artwork. Upon defeating him, they free Bahtan’s parents and return people’s stolen emotions, thereby restoring the colour to their faces.

Contact Rufy’s Film Company Nermeen Salem +20 10 038 62773 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Musk The idea with ‘Musk’ is to try to Humaid Alsuwaidi was born in Based in the UAE, 1893 is Humaid Fall Grants 2016 capture the universal struggle Abu Dhabi in 1984. After working Alsuwaidi’s personal production ‘Misk’ / UAE, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 between fathers and sons. The in a traditional office job for a company. It specialises in making film explores the theme of heredity, few years, he enrolled in the independent feature films and Runtime: 90 min which is very prevalent in the Gulf, New York Film Academy in 2010. also aims to expand to making TV Humaid Alsuwaidi Genre: Drama and follows the two main characters Upon graduating, he worked on a commercials. Alsuwaidi’s ‘Abdullah’ Director / Screenwriter / Producer as they deal with it in their own number of short films, both on set (2015) marks the launch of the Stuck between his dying father and his brooding 12-year-old son, ways. The intention, however, is to and in post-production. ‘Abdullah’ company. Alsuwaidi aims to follow Ahmed tries to overcome his inherent cynicism and save the family’s create a narrative that transcends (2015), his directorial debut, had its the style of his idol Francis Ford crumbling perfume business. its geographical setting. Letting premiere at the Dubai International Coppola to create a family-like the performances of the actors Film Festival. It tells the story of an filmmaking environment of creative dictate the pace of the film and Emirati boy who loves music while minds in order to tell unique finding within these performances growing up in a very conservative stories. 1893 also provides music a universal truth is what I hope to family. composition services for narrative achieve. Ever since I was a little boy, films and television commercials. I have always wanted to be a father. Making this film – and especially working with the actors – has been the closest thing to having a family of my own that I have experienced.

After giving up a promising career in museum management to attend to his ailing father, Ahmed spends his days managing the family’s dying perfume business. This sacrifice and his divorce have made him cynical about human nature and this manifests itself in his relationship with Abdulrahman, his aloof 12-year-old boy. Father and son do not see eye-to-eye, and it is as though they speak in different languages. Ahmed is also rather suspicious that his free-spirited sister is back from her travels in Europe to ensure she gets a nice chunk of the inheritance. Suddenly, Ahmed’s ex-wife sues to deny Contact him visitation rights, claiming she doesn’t want her son to see his grandfather [email protected] dying slowly. Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Screwdriver Defeating confinement requires Born and raised in Palestine, Founded by Yasmine Qaddumi Spring Grants 2016 breaking mental boundaries Bassam Jarbawi began working and Bassam Jarbawi, Rimsh Film ‘Mafak’ / Palestine, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 rather than physical structures. as a photographer during the is a production company based in In this film, numerous real- second Intifada. His photographs Ramallah. The company specialises Runtime: 90 min life stories are woven into a produced several exhibits and still in creating director-driven short Bassam Jarbawi Genre: Action, Drama universal narrative of torture and documentary Frequency (2004). and feature-length narrative and Director / Screenwriter Interests: Identity confinement, which magnifies Bassam completed his B.A. in documentary films. At Rimsh we the battle between one’s image Communication and Political develop, finance and produce Driven to psychosis by the torture he underwent in an Israeli prison, and its reflection. ‘Screwdriver’ is Science at Macalester College, and films, function as co-producers an ex-basketball champ struggles to reassimilate into society. As a haunting psychological thriller earned his M.F.A. in Screenwriting/ in the Middle East, and provide reality blurs with his hallucinations, he cannot help but drive himself about Ziad, who battles to adjust Directing at Columbia University. production services for international back into incarceration. to his chaotic new world after his During his studies at Columbia, he producers with projects shooting in release from prison. He is wrapped produced and directed short films the region. We value collaborations up in a Kafkaesque struggle of and music videos in Palestine, the with established artists as well as Shrihari Sathe rehabilitation and feels on edge United States and Jamaica. His short fresh talent that result in visually Producer as he fails and unravels; his film ‘Roos Djaj (Chicken Heads)’ stunning, award-winning titles. hallucinations increase until he won Best Film at the Columbia Our goal is to work across artistic becomes catatonic, and he grows University Film Festival, premiered platforms with partners in the into a master of self-imposed at New York Film Festival, and won Middle East to bring inspiring local solitary confinement. His prison is First Prize at Dubai’s International content to our global audience. his freedom. He reacts to his open- Film Festival. air confinement with surges of panic and rage, losing control until the line between reality and fantasy is dangerously and permanently Young Ziad is the star of the Jalazon Refugee Camp basketball team in blurred. Palestine. When his best friend is shot dead by Israeli forces, Ziad and his teammates attempt to assassinate an Israeli settler. Ziad is captured and imprisoned, then released 15 years later. ‘Screwdriver’ is a haunting psychological thriller that follows a hallucinating Ziad as he struggles to adjust to his chaotic new world. Ziad’s mental disorder halts his advances Contact with two love interests – Salma, a young woman from the camp, and Mina, Rimsh Film a Palestinian-American filmmaker. Ziad becomes suicidal when soldiers Shrihari Sathe imprison a young basketball player; in the dead of night he hitches a ride that +970597168631 will return him to a more familiar life. [email protected] Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Solo ‘Solo’ is the entanglement of three Mehdi Hmili was born in Tunis Yol Film House is a Tunisian film Fall Grants 2016 themes that have always haunted and graduated from the Paris Film production company that develops, Tunisia, Qatar / Arabic me: family, guilt and redemption. School. While in France, he directed produces and co-produces short Through these themes I seek to his trilogy in black-and-white about and feature-length films. Our vision Genre: Drama depict and translate the complexity love and exile: ‘X-Moment’ (2009), is to tell original and moving stories Mehdi Hmili Interests: Family, Social Issues of family existence in a minimalistic ‘Li-La’ (2011) and ‘The Night of Badr’ that provide a refreshing challenge Director / Screenwriter way. This story of a fallen family is (2012). His first feature-length film, for an international audience. The Amel is released from prison after an affair. In the lower depths of a way to throw the spectator into ‘Thala mon amour’ (2015), a drama company plays an active role in Tunis, she seeks her missing son, Moumen. the inner life of the Tunisian man that takes place in the city of Thala supporting emerging Tunisian of today in this society that is in during the Tunisian Revolution, was and international talents, and the freefall. ‘Solo’ is an uncompromising part of the official selection of the projects we develop have strong portrait of a society that is unable Carthage, Rome and Torino Film potential for international co- to get rid of the demons of its past. Festivals. Hmili is also a popular production and distribution. The context of this Tunisian post- poet in Tunisia, known for his Moufida Fedhila revolutionary society shows how poems against the regime of Zine Producer corruption, violence, obscurantism El Abidine Ben Ali. A former football and criminality have taken player, Hmili recounts his own story possession of the mind of the in ‘Solo’, his second feature-length individual. The film is also a way film currently in development. for me to go back to my past as a football player in Tunis, and to film three worlds that I went through Amel works in a factory in Tunis. She lives with her alcoholic husband furiously and noisily: family, football Tahar, a former local football star, and their only son Moumen, a talented and the street. teenage football player. To convince the boss of the factory to provide her with connections for her son, Amel betrays her fellow workers, who have been organising a strike. Amel meets the connection: Adel, a corrupt, wealthy businessman of ex-president Ben Ali’s era, who takes advantage of the situation and abuses Amel. She surrenders to his advances in order to offer her son the opportunity of a lifetime. When the police catch them, the scandal goes viral, and Amel is imprisoned, accused of adultery and Contact prostitution. After her release, she searches for Moumen in the lower depths Yol Film House of Tunis. During her journey, Amel has to face the fall of Tunisian society. Moufida Fedhila +216 71 353 008 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Stateless Being a filmmaker in Morocco and a Born in 1971 in Tangier, Morocco, Since its conception in 2007, La Fall Grants 2016 woman puts two very distinct issues Narjiss Nejjar has made numerous Prod has been developing fiction ‘Bidoune Haouiya’ / Morocco, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 back to back. The first is to talk documentaries, authored a novel, in its wider sense, combining about one’s country while looking directed a trilogy of short films and imagination and rigour without Runtime: 110 min directly in its eyes; the second to is a screenwriter. Her first feature- contest. Initiating major projects Narjiss Nejjar Genre: Drama talk to oneself while looking into length narrative film, ‘Les Yeux with young directors, La Prod has Director / Screenwriter one’s own eyes. It’s difficult for me Secs’ (2003), was selected for the produced various projects, including Henia will give anything to find her mother, whom she has been to accept that a man or a woman Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the fiction and documentary films, and separated from since 1975. She agrees to marry an old blind man – her is a puppet subject to the decisions Festival de Cannes and received programmes, series, video clips and chance to return to Algeria. To the old man, it’s an opportunity to and pressures of a select few who numerous honours, including the films for television. The company’s start over. To his son, it’s a disgrace. decide what will be their fate. This Bayard d’Or for Best Screenplay. credits include Hicham Lasri’s ‘The is why I make films. My film can be ‘Wake Up Morocco’ (2005) is her End’ (2012), which screened in the summed up by this statemen“The second feature-length fiction film. ACID programme at the Festival de world is a nation in which the After participating in 2010 in the Cannes 2012; Mohamed Achaour’s Lamia Chraibi superior interests of states stop at Terminus des Anges Collective, she ‘Un Film’ (2011); Narjiss Nejjar’s Producer the border of the inferior interests directed ‘L’amant du Rif’ (2012), ‘L’Amante du Rif’ (2011); ‘Terminus of people.” This film puts onscreen which was screened in official des Anges’ (2011) by Nejjar, Lasri characters who don’t really have competition at several festivals. and Mohammed Mouftakir; and free will. Michelle Médina’s ‘All I Wanna Do’ (2011).

Henia will give anything to mend her broken past and find her mother, from whom she has been separated since the conflict between Morocco and Algeria during the Black Demonstration of 1975. After being given an opportunity to assist an elderly blind man, she accepts the offer and eventually finds herself agreeing to marry him. For Henia, this is a chance to get the necessary papers for her return to Algeria. For the old man, it’s a chance to start over. For his son, it is a disgrace. Contact La Prod Lamia Chraibi +212 522 273 602 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative The Maiden’s Pond ‘The Maiden’s Pond’ follows the Bassem Breche is an Emmy The Attic is a growing boutique Fall Grants 2016 relationship between Salma and Award-winning scriptwriter. He film production house with an ‘Birket Al-’arous’ / Lebanon, Germany, Qatar / Arabic Thuraya as it unfolds without began his career as an actor in innovatory sparkle that intends to culminating in a resolution or Lebanon and the UK, appearing bring to light films by emerging Genre: Drama confrontation. What connects these in John Furse’s ‘Blind Flight’ talented directors. Based in Beirut, Bassem Breche Interests: Identity, Women’s Issues two women is the inheritance (2003) and Antonia Bird’s ‘The The Attic was founded in 2009. It Director / Screenwriter of loss and pain, handed down Hamburg Cell’ (2004). His first aims to participate vigorously in The story of two women trying to maintain and negotiate their lives – through the generations despite short film, ‘Both’ (2007), was the present and future of cinema in with and against each other. action or rebellion. In such a selected for the Critics’ Week at the Middle East by focusing on fine context, verbal communication the Festival de Cannes. From 2009 and exceptional content without is impossible, apologies are not through 2011, Breche worked on compromise. The Attic produced available, and forgiveness is not an the Emmy Award-winning web- Elie Kamal’s short films ‘2½’ (2010), option. Forgetting, ignoring and drama ‘Shankaboot’ as Lead Writer which was screened at numerous surviving might be all that is left – a and Online Content Producer. He film festivals and received a Ghassan Salhab lesson that goes against the grain also worked as a scriptwriter on FIPRESCI Prize at the Dubai Screenwriter in a present that is all too keen on the award-winning web series International Film Festival in 2010, resolutions, endings and moral ‘Fasateen’. In 2013, Breche won the ‘Talej’ (2012) and ‘Revoltango’ (2014), lessons. Salma reluctantly returns Robert Bosch Foundation Prize at along with a series of corporate to her state of motherhood, only to the Berlin International Film Festival projects. Currently, The Attic is discover that option is not available for his short film ‘Free Range’ producing several other promising any more. Thuraya returns to her (2014). He is the director of the projects. past in search of a trauma that screenwriters’ collective Scenario ‘The Maiden’s Pond’ tells the story of two women trying to maintain and might be resolved, only to discover Beirut. negotiate their lives with and against each other. Salma survived the Jana Wehbe there is nothing there. Uttering difficultites of her past by letting go of any attachments, including those Producer the words “mum” and “daughter” to her daughter. But the past did not let go of Salma, and has returned her does not end the conflict; it merely daughter to her – defeated, divorced and pregnant. exacerbates it. Moving forward often requires letting go of the past, aborting it, and discovering a different self – one that can provide some comfort for the time that Contact remains. The Attic Jana Wehbe +961 70 963 855 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative The Journey The female suicide bomber Mohamed Jabarah Al Daradji After the international success Spring Grants 2016 is invisible, untouchable; an studied in Iraq and the Netherlands of films including Mohamed ‘Al Rihla’ / Iraq, UK, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 unsuspecting asset to extremist before travelling to the UK to Al Daradji’s ‘Ahlaam’ (2004), ‘Son of missions. Many are preyed upon complete his Masters degree in Babylon’ (2010) and ‘In My Mother’s Runtime: 82 min by extremist factions operating in Cinematography and Directing at Arms’ (2010), production company Mohamed Jabarah Al Daradji Genre: Drama Iraq, throughout the Middle East the Northern Film School in Leeds, Iraq Al-Rafidain established the Director / Screenwriter / Producer Interests: Psychology, Social Issues, War, Women’s Issues and around the world. We start where he won the prestigious Iraqi Independent Film Centre life innocently, so what changes a Kodak Student Commercial Award (IIFC) in 2010, with the intention As Sara stands on the cusp of committing an unthinkable act, time person and drives them to commit for Cinematography. In 2003, he of encouraging and supporting stands still, giving her an opportunity to witness the consequences of such extreme and atrocious returned to Iraq to make his first a new generation of filmmakers, her action. But is this a second chance or an admission of guilt? acts? This film is not intended feature film, ‘Ahlaam’, which while actively pursuing the re- as a political statement, nor a screened at more than 125 establishment and development of condemnation or glorification of international film festivals and the Iraqi film industry. The IIFC has attacks. It will offer audiences the received more than 30 awards, as produced 12 short films by young Isabelle Stead rare opportunity to engage with well as Academy Award and Golden filmmakers, which have screened at Screenwriter / Producer a woman swept up in something Globe consideration. His multi- the Toronto and Berlin International she and we cannot fully fathom, award-winning ‘Son of Babylon’ Film Festivals, among numerous the implications of which are (2010) screened at Sundance other prestigious festivals. In 2014, potentially disastrous. If we do not and the Berlin International Film the IIFC produced Al Daradji’s ‘In fully comprehend the causes behind Festival, where it won the Amnesty the Sands of Babylon’, a prequel to these actions, there will be no Film Award and the Peace Prize. ‘Son of Babylon’. Al Daradji’s ‘The end to suicide terrorism. I am fully Al-Daradji was named ‘Variety’ Journey’ is the second feature- aware of the sensitive nature of this magazine’s Middle Eastern length film to be produced by the film; it has been made with great Filmmaker of the Year after his IIFC. Baghdad, 30 December, 2006. Sara, an unassuming young woman, enters respect for the troubling subject it documentary ‘In My Mother’s Arms’ Baghdad’s central train station with sinister intentions. On the edge of deals with, detailing a very real and (2010) premiered at the Toronto committing a destructive and heinous act, Sara finds her plans are drastically unfortunately frequent scenario of International Film Festival and won altered, complicated by an unwanted and awkward encounter with Salam, a tragic events. the Asia-Pacific Screen Academy self-assured and flirtatious salesman. In an unfortunate twist of fate, Salam Award for Best Documentary. ‘In the becomes a hostage in Sara’s confused and deluded master plan to blow Sands of Babylon’ (2013) screened at up the station. Caught up in the chaos of a situation he cannot begin to the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, where Contact comprehend, Salam desperately tries to understand Sara’s motives and to it won the award for Best Arab Film. Iraq Al-Rafidain sway her decision. In a moment of reflection, Sara is given the opportunity to Mohamed Jabarah Al Daradji learn about the lives she has been so willing to destroy for others. +964 770 552 9744 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative The Poster As a woman, I’ve always been Suha Arraf was born in the Before launching the independent Fall Grants 2016 fascinated by the unique, private Palestinian village of Melia, near the production company ASAP Films ‘Almnshor’ / Palestine, France, Germany, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 world of women. I grew up in a border with Lebanon. She began her along with Danis Tanović in 2003, world fed by rumours, and I have filmmaking career as a documentary Čedomir Kolar and Marc Baschet Runtime: 95 min long understood what a rumour producer. Her most recent film worked together from 1992 to 2002 Suha Arraf Genre: Satire could actually do to a woman. I as a producer, ‘Women of Hamas’ as producers at Noé Productions Director / Screenwriter Interests: Social Issues knew that it could ruin her life, not (2010), received 13 awards at in Paris. Among many other films, only in my own village, but in the international film festivals. Arraf’s they produced Milcho Manchevski’s In Reith, a Palestinian village in , a poster appears on the village many villages and cities I have first two screenplays, ‘The Syrian ‘Before the Rain’ (1994); Carmine walls, accusing the women of the village of moral dissolution. visited since. Behind every rumour Bride’ (2004) and ‘The Lemon Tree’ Amoroso’s ‘As You Want Me’ (1997); lies a much more awful truth. (2008), both directed by Eran Riklis, Idrissa Ouedraogo’s ‘Afrique mon Whenever there are rumours about won international acclaim, with Afrique’ (1994) and ‘Kini and Adams a family’s honour, all it takes is a the latter winning the prize for Best (1997); Radu Mihaileanu’s ‘Train of little bit of digging to realise that the Screenplay at the Asia Pacific Screen Life’ (1998); Aktan Abdykalykov’s Čedomir Ckolar, Marc Baschet murmurings are merely camouflage Awards, and a Best Screenplay ‘The Adopted Son’ (1998) and Producers for something much larger; nomination at the European Film ‘The Chimp’ (2001); Giacomo something people are desperate to Academy Awards. In 2014, Arraf was Campiotti’s ‘Il Tempo dell’Amore’ hide. This film is a desperate cry for one of ‘Variety’ magazine’s Top 10 (1999); Tanović’s ‘No Man’s Land’ the truth – the real truth – to step Screenwriters to Watch. (2001) and his contribution to the out from behind the shadows and omnibus film ‘11/09/01’ (2002); veils so it can be heard at last. It is and Tom Tykwer’s ‘Heaven’ (2002). the truth of villagers who live in a Independent since its birth in bubble, isolated from the world. It September 2003, and endowed with A poster appears on the walls of the Palestinian village of Reith, accusing the is the truth of people who refuse the producers’ years of experience local women of moral dissolution. This causes a stir among the inhabitants to confront the harsh reality of within other structures, ASAP and forces the local council to make a difficult decision: should they call upon occupation and the truth of a world promotes auteur films in a spirit the Israeli authorities to investigate, or abandon the accused women to their in which Arabs are second-class of cultural dialogue by setting up fate? citizens. These are pressing issues international co-productions. Kolar that deserve to be heard. They are and Baschet were nominated for truths so harsh that it is often easier the Academy Award for Best Film to hide them and focus instead for ‘Before the Rain’, and shared Contact on gossip about women and their that award with Tanović for ‘No ASAP Films honour. Man’s Land’. Čedomir Ckolar [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative The Silence Who are they? Where and how do Álvaro Aponte-Centeno Created in 2012 in San Juan, Puerto Fall Grants 2016 they live? Do they have family? obtained a Master’s degree Rico, Quenepa Producciones is an How is their family? How is their in Communications from the independent production company of the Wind daily life? Are they loved? What are University of Puerto Rico. He that is dedicated producing their emotions? How do they feel directed the award-winning short narrative and documentary film Álvaro Aponte-Centeno ‘El Silencio del Viento’ / Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, France, Qatar / about life? How do they feel about films ‘Luz’ (2010), ‘Mi Santa Mirada’ projects, with high technical and Director / Screenwriter Spanish / 2017 death? All of these questions point (2012), which was selected for the creative skills. The company also to what interests me about people Official Competition of the Festival develops new ideas to encourage Runtime: 87 min who are behind certain of the social de Cannes, and ‘Yahaira’ (2015). international co-production. Genre: Drama problems of our world today. I am With his first feature-length project Executive producer Maite Rivera trying to get closer to the universe film, ‘La mar’, he participated in the Carbonell has been working in the Rafito finds he cannot mourn the death of his sister because of his of each of them without judging, second IBERMEDIA Workshop of film industry for over 15 years. She continued involvement with human trafficking, bringing immigrants instead questioning things, seeking Film Projects of Central America and developed her career in and from the Dominican to Puerto Rico by sea. a better understanding of the world the Caribbean, where he won first won two Goya awards as a sound Maite Rivera Carbonell in order to be able to change it. In prize. He is a recipient of funding designer. She produced and directed Producer ‘The Silence of the Wind’, I approach from the prestigious international the documentary ‘Las Carpetas’ the main theme of loss and death film funds Aide aux Cinémas du (2011) and is now developing for one man, then from the specific Monde and IBERMEDIA. several film projects in Puerto Rico. I move to the general, exposing as a Currently, Quenepa is in post- sub-theme the issues surrounding production with ‘La Ruta’, a feature migration among the islands of the film shot in Europe, and young Caribbean, a topic that applies all director Álvaro Aponte-Centeno’s around the planet – one that in this ‘The Silence of the Wind’. particular region has taken place for decades with not very happy endings. Rafito deals in smuggling undocumented people from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States. After his sister is murdered, he takes care of his family and the human-trafficking business. On his current journey, he will face death after the collapse of a craft filled with hopeful migrants. A story about daily survival in the contemporary Caribbean, Contact ‘The Silence of the Wind’ seeks to contemplate this netherworld without Quenepa Producciones judgement. Maite Rivera Carbonell +1 787 210 8427 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Volubilis Despite the security of their true Faouzi Bensaïdi directed ‘La Barney Production is an Fall Grants 2016 love, Abdelkader and Malika, a Falaise’, his first short film, in independent company created in Morocco, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 young couple, have a difficult and 1997, for which he received 23 2010 by Saïd Hamich. In 2012, the frustrating everyday life. He is a awards. In 2000, he directed two company received the Jean-Luc Runtime: 106 min security guard in one of those short films: ‘Le Mur’, which won Lagardère Foundation Grant for Film Faouzi Bensaïdi Genre: Drama brand-new malls, those great an award at the Festival de Cannes, Producers. With the ambition of Director / Screenwriter symbols of a contemporary world and ‘Trajets’, which won a prize at developing auteur cinema, Barney Abdelkader and Malika have just married and are madly in love. One ruled by consumption and finance; the Venice Film Festival. In 2003, Production has already produced 14 day, however, Abdelkader experiences a violent and humiliating she is a domestic worker in the his first feature ‘Mille Mois’ won short films, and also co-produced incident that will turn the couple’s destiny upside-down. city’s posh neighbourhoods. They two awards at Cannes. In 2013, he Nabil Ayouch’s ‘Much Loved’ (2014), are some of the “little people” who directed ‘Death for Sale’, which won Faouzi Bensaïdi’s ‘Volubilis’ (coming have always moved me. I want an award at the Berlin International 2017) and Walid Mattar’s ‘Northern to tell their story, as well as pay Film Festival. Throughout his Wind’ (coming 2017). The company tribute to their dignity. As a result career, Bensaïdi has also worked is currently working on four short Saïd Hamich of ruthless class struggle, Morocco as an author and actor with great films and developing several Producer is rotten – a country caught up in directors including Nabil Ayouch, feature-length films. a class war, a country that is ready André Techiné and Nadir Mocknech. to explode. Over the last several All of his films have received critical years, we feign not seeing a growing acclaim and have been distributed societal hatred of the elite. People around the world. who are excluded from the system begin to reject culture, language, all the symbols of “modernism”. Abdelkader is a security guard and Malika is a domestic employee. Recently ‘Volubilis’ is a film about the human married, they are madly in love; they dream of moving in together and of being who has been created by the living their love to the full, despite the financial difficulties they face. One day, madness of the early part of this however, Abdelkader experiences a violent and humiliating incident that will new century: its contradictions, its turn the couple’s destiny upside-down. flaws, its fears and its confusions.

Contact Barney Production Saïd Hamich [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Wallay Ady is a teenager of mixed race. Since 1999, Berni Goldblat Created in 2006, Les Films du Fall Grants 2016 France is his home country, but his has been directing, producing Djabadjah is an independent Burkina Faso, France, Qatar / Dioula, French / 2017 skin is dark – a colour inherited from and distributing films, primarily production and distribution his father. But, in more profound documentaries in West Africa. In company based in Bobo-Dioulasso, Runtime: 90 min terms, where does it really come 2006, he established Les films Burkina Faso. Berni Goldblat Genre: Comedy, Drama from? Ady does not know what to du Djabadjah, an independent Director / Producer Interests: Youth do with the heritage he is wearing; production company based in perhaps he doesn’t even know Burkina Faso. Since 2007, Goldblat While sliding down the slippery slope towards delinquency, Ady, a whether he ought to be doing has been a member of the jury of French-Burkinabe adolescent, is sent by his father to the family anything about it – he is, after all, the African Movie Academy Awards village in Burkina Faso. It is the first time he treads the soil of his essentially from a culture he knows (AMAA), the African equivalent of paternal ancestors. nothing about. ‘Wallay’ relates the the Academy Awards for African quest for identity that Ady must films held annually in Nigeria. resolve, whether he likes it or not. Since 2011, he has been training David Bouchet The film focuses on a moment of documentary screenwriters. He has Screenwriter upheaval; an instant when a life can organised and led six international be turned upside-down. It is almost documentary writing workshops for a coincidence that brings about this young African authors in Bobo- change in Ady – a sudden decision Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Since 2012, taken abruptly by his father. Wallay Goldblat has been President of the is the coming-of-age story of a Association de Soutien du Cinéma mixed-race French teenager who au Burkina Faso (ASCBF), which loses himself in Burkina Faso and is saving Bobo-Dioulasso’s Ciné Faissol Fahad Boladé Gnonlonfin finds out who he really is. Guimbi. Producer While he slides down the slippery slope towards delinquency, Ady, a French- Burkinabe adolescent, is sent by his father to the family village in Burkina Faso. This will mark the first time the youth has trodden the soil of his paternal ancestors, and he is eager to go. The welcome he receives from his Uncle Amadou is a rough one, however – and what Ady had imagined would be a holiday abroad will soon turn into a forced stay… Contact Les Films du Djabadjah Faissol Fahad Boladé Gnonlonfin +226 6023 2710 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Whispering Sands With ‘Whispering Sands’, the Born in Korba, Tunisia, Nacer Wallada Production was created Spring Grants 2016 spectator travels into two worlds Khemir is a filmmaker, writer, by director Nacer Khemir in 2009 ‘Hams Alrimal’ / Tunisia, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 that occasionally overlap, but often calligrapher, painter and storyteller. to produce his own films after he interact - a trip between the visible From an early age, Khemir was co-produced his feature ‘Bab’Aziz, Runtime: 92 min and the invisible. It is only upon fascinated by classical Arabic The Prince Who Contemplated His Nacer Khemir Genre: Road Trip arrival that one realizes the purpose culture and by storytelling, and Soul’ (2005). Since its launch, the Director / Screenwriter / Producer Interests: Identity of it all. Some dreamlike images, has cited ‘One Thousand and One company has produced numerous issued from the male protagonist’s Nights’ as a particular influence. feature-length narrative and An encounter in the desert between a woman haunted by her family’s memory, contrast with those of Through his work, Khemir has documentary films, including tragic past, and her guide, who discovers his own family’s dark future. the film’s two main characters – a thrown bridges between shores, Khemir’s ‘En Passant avec André foreign woman and a local guide between North and South, East and Miquel’ (2010), ‘Sheherazade’ (2011), who undertake a voyage through West. He has written and directed ‘Looking for Muhyiddin’ (2012), the desert of Tunisia – which are numerous films, which have won ‘Yasmina and the 60 Names of Love’ realistic and contemporary. It is several international awards. Among (2013) and ‘Where to Start?’ (2014). a “non-violent” film that caters to them are his famous desert trilogy: Wallada Production is currently audiences of all ages – each and ‘The Wanderers of the Desert’ (1984), producing Khemir’s feature every viewer will find something ‘The Dove’s Lost Necklace’ (1990) ‘Whispering Sands’. that will thrill them: love, happiness, and ‘Bab’Aziz, the Prince Who endearing memories and wisdom. Contemplated His Soul’ (2005). But also sadness, anger and Khemir’s literary work comprises a shadows of an uncertain future. dozen publications and his output ‘Whispering Sands’ leads one to is still growing. His plastic art work meditate and, I think, creates in has been the subject of numerous A Canadian woman of Arab descent undertakes a trip and hires a guide to one’s heart a deep sentiment of loss. exhibitions at the Centre Georges help her find a specific place in the Tunisian desert. To encourage her to Pompidou and the Museum of reveal her secret, the guide tells her Sufi stories inspired by his childhood. Modern Art in Paris, among others. Once in the heart of the desert, the woman reveals the reason behind her voyage. The lighthearted guide learns during the trip that his sons have left the country. He must catch his boys before they engage in a dark and fatal future.

Contact Wallada Production Nacer Khemir [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative You Will Die After 14 years of making short films, Amjad Abu Alala is a Sudanese Transit Films is an independent, Spring Grants 2016 I felt puzzled about how to choose filmmaker who was born and raised Cairo-based production company my first feature film. I wanted to in the UAE. He studied media at established by producer Hossam at Twenty tackle one of Sudan’s cinematically United Arab Emirates University. Elouan. The company specialises in undiscovered stories, but I hesitated As a producer and director, Abu producing Egyptian and Arab art- Amjad Abu Alala ‘Satmoot Fel Eshreen’ / Sudan, Egypt, Qatar / Arabic due to their sheer number and Alala has made numerous short house films that have the potential Director diversity until I read ‘Sleeping films that have been shown at film to break into the international film Genre: Adaptation, Coming of age, Drama Under the Mountain’s Feet’ by Arab festivals, including ‘Tina’ (2009), market. Transit Films focuses as Interests: Women’s Issues, Youth Booker Award nominee Hammour ‘Coffee and Orange’ (2004), and well on fresh, new talent who can Ziada. Despite its simplicity, Ziada’s ‘Feathers of the Birds’ (2005), which become a source of innovation both In a world where extremism rules, a young man has to choose short story depicts a lot of grief is considered to mark the return of for the film industry as well as for between life and death. and pain for those communities cinema in Sudan. His ‘Studio’ (2012) alternative cinemas in Egypt. Transit who are drowning in ignorance was supervised during a workshop Films recently came on board with and belief in imposters and their conducted by Abbas Kiarostami. Sherif Elbandary’s ‘Ali, the Goat and Yousif Ibrahim superstitions. ‘You Will Die at In 2013, Abu Alala won the Best Ibrahim’ (2016), written by Ibrahim Screenwriter Twenty’ might appear to be a Arabic Theatre Script Award from El Batout and Ahmed Amer; Hala melancholy film about death, the Arab Authority for ‘Apple Pies’. Elkoussy’s ‘Cactus Flower’; and superstitions, ignorance and poverty, Currently, Abu Alala is Head of the Khaled Hafez’s ‘All Time Idlers’. yet it is not. When we dive into the Programming Committee of the absurdity of the story, we might see Sudan Independent Film Festival. the comedy hidden beneath the darkness that has been imposed upon the protagonist and the other Hossam Elouan characters. The film is inspired by Producer In a Sudanese village, a mother gives birth to Muzamel, a boy cursed by folk drama along with fantasy and a a Dervish prophecy that he will die at the age of 20. Muzamel grows up rich visual language. surrounded by looks of sympathy that make him feel dead before his time, until Suliman, a cinematographer who has worked in the city, returns to the village. Suliman’s old cinema projector opens a window onto a whole new world for Muzamel. His personality starts to change with Suliman’s presence, and slowly he comes to doubt the truth of the prophecy. His Contact mother desperately attempts to prevent the prophecy from coming to pass. Transit Films After many defeats, including losing his father, Muzamel begins to dig his Hossam Elouan own grave. When the day of his 20th birthday arrives, he is torn by doubt and +201 605 287 32 left with the choice between death and a bus to the world he is eager to know [email protected] about. Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Narrative Zanka Contact Ever-changing, farcical and Ismaël El Iraki was born in Barney Production is an Fall Grants 2016 sometimes revolting, Casablanca Morocco in 1983 and emigrated independent company created in Morocco, France, Qatar / Arabic is a formidable playground for to France in 2001. After studying 2010 by Saïd Hamich. In 2012, the a filmmaker. In an old country Philosophy and Cinema at the company received the Jean-Luc Genre: Drama tempted by traditionalism, the Sorbonne, he joined the Directing Lagardère Foundation Grant for Film Ismaël El Iraki Interests: Music, Social Issues, Women’s Issues city is like a rebellious teenage girl Department of La Fémis in 2004. All Producers. With the ambition of Director / Screenwriter at the age when everything still of his short films concern Morocco developing auteur cinema, Barney Casablanca. The romantic idyll and eventful odyssey of a has- seems possible. Like a teen, it is and are linked to the Nayda artistic Production has already produced 14 been rocker and a singer with a golden voice. Their love will turn violent, contradictory, ugly and movement in Casablanca. El Iraki’s short films, and also co-produced underground and dangerous Morocco upside-down. beautiful at the same time. The two latest shorts were both noted Nabil Ayouch’s ‘Much Loved’ (2014), city of the richest and the poorest; successes: ‘Carcasse’ (2007) won Faouzi Bensaïdi’s ‘Volubilis’ (coming the cradle of radical Islam and the the Short Film Corner Prize at the 2017) and Walid Mattar’s ‘Northern birthplace of anti-establishment Festival de Cannes, and ‘H’rash’ Wind’ (coming 2017). The company movements; home of subversive (2009) won a Special Mention at is currently working on four short Saïd Hamich rock and traditional chaabi; such the Clermont-Ferrand International films and developing several Producer is Casablanca in ‘Zanka Contact’. Short Film Festival. Today, El Iraki is feature-length films. If it seems to move from realism developing two feature-length films, to genre, if it feels like a roller- including ‘Zanka Contact’. coaster between fun and drama it is because that mixture of tones is my most honest way of portraying the city as I see and love it. My Casablanca is a land of fiction, a Casablanca. Larsen, a self-destructive has-been rocker, meets Rajae, a collective hallucination of sorts; a singer with a golden voice and a bad temper. They’re both running away: he raw cocktail of dream and reality. from the heroin monkey on his back, she from life on the streets. Through their common passion for music, they fall madly in love. Rajae confides in Larsen, and he writes a rock anthem that tells her party-girl life better than she ever could. Their adventure rumbles and tumbles in this little-known, underground and dangerous Morocco, filled with music-buff pimps, torturer cops and pit-bull-raising ladies of the night. When Rajae breaks free by Contact fighting back against her most cruel and powerful client, the lovers flee south, Barney Production towards redemption. But they are being followed and their freedom spree Saïd Hamich might end in a bloody mess… Can their romance survive it? [email protected] Feature Documentary

A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy City of the Sun House in the Fields I Used to Sleep on the Rooftop Listen to the Silence My Friend Gadhgadhi On the Hillsides Ouaga Girls Plot 35 Republic of Silence The Desert, 1000 Days The Forgotten This Is Congo Trophy

Feature Experimental or Essay

Experimental Summer From a Palm Tree to the Stars On Trials Ouroboros The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary A Comedian in Like all Syrians of my generation, Rami Farah was born in Final Cut for Real is a film Spring Grants 2016 I have known about Fares Helou in 1980. After studying dance at production company based in since I was a child, through the Higher Institute of Arts in Copenhagen. The company was a Syrian Tragedy television dramas and comedies. , he attended numerous founded in 2009 by producers Signe Fares was not only cherished for training courses and workshops in Byrge Sørensen and Anne Köhncke, Rami Farah ‘Hikayat Mumathil Kharaj ‘an Alnas’ / Syria, Denmark, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 his talent and incredible humour, contemporary film and dance. His editor Janus Billeskov Jansen and Director / Screenwriter but also for his generosity and his first films and videos blend dance director Joshua Oppenheimer. Runtime: 90 min social commitment. When the and audiovisual material. ‘ZamKan’ Since then, producers Monica Genre: Comedy, Creative Documentary revolution broke out, Helou was in (2004), unfolds as a dialogue Hellström, Maria Kristensen and Interests: Immigration, Psychology, War the process of creating the Bustan, between a ceiling fan and a chair Heidi Elise Christensen have joined an independent art space for young in a silent room. It was followed by the company. Dedicated to high- An intimate portrait of Syrian actor Fares Helou, who calls artists in Damascus. When the ‘Point’ (2004), a short video that was end creative documentaries for the for freedom of speech, is forced to flee his home country, and revolution erupted, Helou was one screened in several exhibitions and international market, Final Cut for experiences the absurdities of existence in exile. of the first famous artists to speak festivals. In 2006, Farah shot and Real’s policy is to be curious and Signe Byrge Sorenson out against the regime. Soon after, produced a 35-minute documentary daring, and seek out directors with Producer he had to go undercover, until about the Golan Heights entitled serious artistic ambitions. With finally he had to flee to France in ‘Silence’. no limits on subject or location, 2011. Two months later, I followed we look for interesting stories, him with his wife and his two great characters and in-depth daughters. At first, I thought I would social analysis – and try to give be there for a week, but before long films a twist of humour. We cover I realised that a new chapter had a wide range of development begun in Helou’s life, in my life, and and production expertise – and in my film: exile. work with younger talent as well as established filmmakers to create a productive mixture of This chronicle of an uprising and of exile begins in the early months of the experience and new approaches Syrian revolution, when director Rami Farah decides to follow Syrian actor to documentary filmmaking. Our Fares Helou, one of the first Syrian stars to take a public stand against the films have won Danish, Nordic and regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Helou participates in a demonstration, he and international awards and have been his family receive threats, and he worries about Al Bustan, an art centre he screened at numerous festivals Contact is trying to establish as a free space for artists of all kinds. After Al Bustan is around the world. Final Cut for Real destroyed by the regime, Helou leaves Syria for France. Farah follows with Signe Byrge Sorenson Helou’s wife and children, believing they will soon be back in Damascus. He [email protected] expects the revolution will be a success. But Syria falls apart, and neither actor nor director has a script for this new chapter in their lives: exile. Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary City of the Sun ‘City of the Sun’ is a meeting point Rati Oneli was born in Tbilisi. He Founded in 2014 by Rati Oneli and Spring Grants 2016 between documentary form and my lived in New York City from 1999 to Dea Kulumbegashvili, OFA is an ‘Mzis Qalaqi’ / Georgia, USA, The Netherlands, Qatar / Georgian / 2017 subjective impression of the place 2014, when he moved to Georgia in independent production company where the events unfold. The City order make his documentary ‘City based in Tbilisi. The company Runtime: 100 min is a fantastical space where time is of the Sun’. He specialised in Middle specialises in producing author- Rati Oneli Genre: Creative Documentary frozen and people live in a hypnotic East Studies and International driven films, and exploring the Director / Screenwriter / Producer state. It is a living organism, where Affairs at the Free University of film medium through personal, A surreal vision of the lives of the few inhabitants of Chiatura, Georgia air-cable cars crisscross like blood Tbilisi and at Columbia University authentic vision. Work produced – a post-Soviet ghost town. vessels. It reminds us of an alien in New York. Currently, he is by OFA includes Kulumbegashvili’s outpost, a colony where enslaved pursuing his PhD in Philosophy at award-winning short film ‘Invisible humans provide fuel for the mother the European Graduate School. In Spaces’ (2014), which had its ship. The City and the characters 2014, he produced and co-edited premiere at the Festival de Cannes. exist in a timeless dimension, rather Dea Kulumbegashvili’s ‘Invisible In February of 2016, OFA produced than a specific locale in a post- Spaces’, a short film that premiered Kulumbegashvili’s second short film, Dea Kulumbegashvili Soviet territory. ‘City of the Sun’ at the Festival de Cannes. In ‘Lethe’, which had its premiere in Screenwriter stands as a testament of human 2016, Rati Oneli produced Dea the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. extremes: our mixed desire for Kulumbegashvili’s second short film, OFA is currently developing ‘Daisi/ architecture and destruction. The ‘Lethe’, which had its premiere in the Red Sunset’, a feature-length film city carries a seed of both universal Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. co-written by Kulumbegashvili and suffering and hope in its DNA. No Oneli that won the Grand Prix for matter where we go in the world, Best Pitch at the Sofia Meetings. we encounter similar endeavours of Most recently, OFA produced Oneli’s The lives, dreams and destinies of several extraordinary characters unfold human ingenuity and carelessness feature-length documentary ‘City amid the grand ruins of once-“glorious” Soviet architectural and technological Jim Stark – grand experiments without regard of the Sun’, which had its premiere achievements in the semi-abandoned mining town of Chiatura. Zurab, a Producer for the human toll. in the Forum section of the Berlin music teacher, is on a quest to destroy gigantic buildings to keep his sanity International Film Festival in 2017. and provide for his family; Archil, a miner-turned-actor, has to make a life- altering choice between quitting the theatre and giving up his dream, or feeding his family by keeping his job in the mines and as a result becoming miserable; and two malnourished champion athletes have to overcome the odds and win the next Olympic games in order to survive. Contact OFA Rati Oneli [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Experimental or Essay Experimental I was always a lover of films as well Mahmoud Lotfy is an independent Otaku Digital Film is a film Spring Grants 2016 as filmmaking, which could be Egyptian director. He previously production and distribution the reason I made ‘Experimental participated in the making of several company based in Cairo. It was Summer Summer’ – as a tribute to this independent films, and is one of founded in 2013 by a group of passion and to the original the founders of Otaku Digital Film. Egyptian filmmakers. Mahmoud Lotfy ‘Saif Tagreby’ / Egypt, Qatar / Arabic, French / 2017 filmmakers of Egypt. Though ‘Experimental Summer’, his first full- Director / Producer this may be a fiction film with length fiction film, took over three Runtime: 70 min a set beginning and end, it was years to shoot. Genre: Docufiction, Dramedy, Satire not really based on any previous Interests: Identity, Youth conception of a fiction film’s form or rhythm. I always followed my Mahmoud and Zeinab are making a documentary about feelings and I did not set limits ‘Experimental Summer’, an independent Egyptian film produced in the to experimentation. What we mid-1980s whose makers are unknown. eventually came up with is a film Randa Abo-Eldahab, with its own character, a tale full Essam Esmail of details and a varied storyline Producers forming an endless algorithm, blurring the lines between the film and the process that produced it.

Both Mahmoud and Zeinab join in the search for the original version of an Egyptian film that was made back in the 1980s, all copies of which were confiscated for unknown reasons by the government film agency at the time. ‘Experimental Summer’ is a fantasy journey into the world of filmmaking.

Contact Otaku Digital Film Mahmoud Lotfy +20 12 8520 9062 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Experimental or Essay From a Palm Tree This story is my story. The story of Based in Berlin, Leila Albayaty is KIDAM is a French production Fall Grants 2016 my families and my countries, and a French-Iraqi singer-, company. Since 2010, it has of people who were obliged to leave film director, writer and actor. focused its interest on art-house to the Stars their homes to find new ones – to Her award-winning films and mainstream short, mid- and carry on with their inner culture have premiered at the Berlin feature-length fiction, documentary Leila Albayaty ‘D’un Palmier Aux Etoiles’ / Iraq, France, Germany, Qatar / as their only roots. Now that I am International Film Festival, the and concert films. Director / Screenwriter Arabic, French / 2017 working on this film, I believe we Dubai International Film Festival, only truly understand something Indie Lisboa and numerous other Runtime: 80 min when we have the distance to see international festivals. Albayaty Genre: Creative Documentary it completely. Is exile perhaps the combines music, cinema and best way to understand and see autobiographical inspirations in her Leila, a French-Iraqi artist, is trying to find her lost Arabic origins. where we come from? Through artistic works to reveal her profund Through music transmitted by her Iraqi father, she draws a parallel music, my father and I connected unease of being cut away from her between her family’s history and the tragedies of Iraq. with each other as we never have Arab roots and culture even as she François-Pierre Clavel before. With this modest language, I witnesses the terrorism that strikes Producer fulfilled my body with the sounds I as a consequence of international am singing. Singing Arabic songs is interventionist politics. like drinking in my father’s culture; no words, no explanations are as powerful as music for telling a story and conveying a culture. ‘From a Palm Tree to the Stars’ is about this culture of mine that is sleeping inside me. This culture has to wake up now that I need it to reach higher personal horizons. ‘From a Palm Tree to the Stars’ portrays an encounter between Western and Arab cultures via the story of a French-Iraqi family. Abdul was a co-founder of the Ba’ath party in Iraq. Threatened by the Iraqi authorities, he had to flee the country. In 1970, he met Simone in Paris, where they fell in love and started a family. Now they spend half their time in Egypt and the other half in France. A Contact musician and filmmaker, their eldest daughter Leila began filming her family KIDAM in 2001. Recently, she felt the need to return to her Arabic heritage after François-Pierre Clavel rejecting it for most of her life, and she tries to learn the language and culture +33 1 46 28 53 17 through songs written by her father. This in turn gives him the opportunity to [email protected] speak about the tragedies taking place in Iraq, and to witness the fractures of an exiled family who, in spite of everything, still believe in hope and freedom. Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary House in the Fields A portrait of an individual is also a Tala Hadid made her first film Founded by Tala Hadid, Kairos Fall Grants 2016 portrait of a family, of a community, about Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her work Films is dedicated to developing, ‘Tigmi Nigren’ / Morocco, Qatar / Amazigh / 2017 a people and a nation. In the has screened at festivals around producing and marketing original, remote communities of the Atlas the world, including the Berlin artistically rigorous, innovative Runtime: 85 min Mountains, what is key is the International Film Festival and the and socially conscious films in Tala Hadid Genre: Coming of age, Creative Documentary social body of the “village”. Yet Venice Film Festival and, among Morocco and internationally. The Director / Producer within the heart of each person other venues, at the Museum company’s first film, ‘House in in this body politic lie dreams of Modern Art and the Lincoln the Fields’, was awarded various In a village in the High Atlas Mountains, at the crossroads of tradition and aspirations, fears and regrets. Center in New York City, the Walker post-production prizes at the Final and change, two sisters experience the last seasons of childhood. ‘House in the Fields’ is at once a Arts Center in Minneapolis, the Cut in Venice workshop at the 2015 tableau of a rural community and Cinémathèque Française in Paris Venice Biennale. Kairos is currently a series of intimate portraits of and the Photographer’s Gallery in developing its first feature-length individuals. Living with and filming London. Her films have received film, which it hopes to launch in these farmers over the course numerous awards, among them an 2017. Besides its own productions, of five years meant participating Academy Award. In 2015, Hadid’s Kairos will also develop a wide range in their daily lives. In turn, they ‘House in the Fields’ was selected to of high-quality film, visual art and participated in constructing their screen as a work-in-progress at the theatre productions in Morocco in own representations. Realities, Venice Film Festival, where it was collaboration with film professionals as documentary filmmaker Jean awarded two prizes. It premiered and other cultural producers. Rouch points out, are always co- in 2016 at the Berlinale, where it constructed; the presence of the was nominated for the Glashutte camera, like the presence of the documentary award. filmmaker, naturally stimulates, ‘House in the Fields’ examines the life of a rural Amazigh community isolated modifies and catalyses. People in the High Atlas Mountains. For the most part, the 1,000-year history of respond by revealing themselves, the Amazighen in Morocco has been preserved and recounted in oral form and they eventually begin to and transmitted to today’s pastoral Tamazight-speaking communities by participate in the telling of their storytellers and bards. This film continues the tradition of transmission in own stories. audio-visual form in an attempt to document and present a faithful portrait of a village and a community that has remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of years despite being confronted with the rapidly changing socio- Contact political realities of the nation at large. We follow the lives of two teenage Kairos Films sisters, one who must give up school to prepare for her wedding, and the Tala Hadid other who dreams of becoming a lawyer. [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary I Used to Sleep At 27 years of age, I had never had Born in Beirut in 1988, Angie Beirut DC is a Lebanese cultural Spring Grants 2016 an urgent reason to leave Beirut, Obeid obtained a bachelor’s association, created in 1999 by nor a defined destination to move degree in Film Directing and a group of filmmakers and arts on the Rooftop to. Still, I could not put aside the Scriptwriting from Notre Dame advocates. The association’s main idea of leaving for good. I was still University – Louaize. Since 2009, activities are producing independent Angie Obeid ‘Sayf 2015’ / Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 in that state of searching when Obeid has worked as a producer, documentaries; organising capacity- Director Nuhad, the 53-year-old mother assistant director and editor on building workshops with young Arab Runtime: 75 min of a friend of mine, left Syria and numerous documentaries for Al- filmmakers; and staging the biennal Genre: Creative Documentary came to seek refuge in my home. Jazeera Documentary Channel, in Beirut Cinema Days film festival We were going through the same addition to several independent as well as several Arab film weeks Twenty-seven-year-old Angie, a Lebanese filmmaker, hosts a 53-year- process; we were waiting for documentaries. ‘I Used To Sleep in Europe and in the Arab world. old Syrian woman in her small apartment in Beirut. There, they wait something that was undefined. On The Rooftop’ is her first feature- Beirut DC’s latest productions endlessly for an opportunity to reach a better place. Nuhad’s multiple attempts to leave length documentary as a director. include ‘Seeing the Self’ (2015), 20 made me realise how passive I have short videos by Syrian and Lebanese Jad Abi-Khalil been. I found myself witnessing youngsters; and Bassem Fayyad’s Producer this woman’s changes throughout ‘Diaries of a Flying Dog’ (2014), Zeina that period. I started to observe Sfeir’s ‘All About My Father’ (2010) her, and us. Which of us was living and Simon Al Habre’s ‘The One- the age of which? I began filming Man Village’ (2008), three feature- simply for the sake of the singularity length documentaries. In 2015, the of this situation. The power of association held the Beirut Cinema every moment made me realise Platform, three days of meetings, that my first independent feature training and pitching for 15 Arab documentary was in the making. producers and 25 industry experts.

Nuhad, a 53-year-old Syrian woman, had never left Syria until the war made her reconsider her existence in a country where she didn’t belong. In 2015, she made the decision to leave Damascus. Her destination was Beirut and Angie, a 27-year-old Lebanese woman – Nuhad’s son’s friend, the only possible host. Angie’s house becomes Nuhad’s refuge, an antechamber leading to indefinite asylum destinations. Angie observes the older woman Contact projecting her own life onto the confines of the small apartment, and finds Beirut DC intersections between her own life and Nuhad’s: both are vainly trying Jad Abi-Khalil to move out of their own walls to find the right place in which to exist. +961 1 293 212 Unsatisfied, Angie is waiting as well, living vicariously through Nuhad’s [email protected] experience. Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary Listen to the Silence One day I had the fortune to Mariam Chachia was born and OpyoDoc is a not-for-profit Spring Grants 2016 discover a silent world separated raised in Tbilisi, and studied organisation that works to bring ‘Mousmine Sichumes’ / Georgia, Qatar / Georgian / 2016 from society: Public Boarding Directing Drama at Shota Rustaveli about social change through School 203 for the Deaf. The Theatre and Film Georgian making documentary films that Runtime: 85 min children’s world is contained within State University. ‘Listen to the highlight real social problems. We Mariam Chachia Genre: Creative Documentary the walls of this school; this is Silence’ is her first feature-length run social initiatives that work Director Interests: Children where they live, learn and grow. documentary. with marginalised groups to help However, each of them has a wish give them a voice and allow them Nine years old and completely deaf, Luka dreams of dancing on stage. to break down the borders to the to integrate into wider society, as He follows his dream and learns Georgian folk-dancing, after which outside world and to interact and well as training programmes for his life changes completely. integrate with wider society. Here budding documentary filmmakers I met nine-year-old Luka, who is in partnership with Doc Monde. unable to communicate with his Since 2014, we have had a strong parents because they do not speak connection with various European Nino Jincharadze, Nikolas Voigt his language and he cannot hear companies and broadcasters. Producers theirs. Luka has a dream to dance OpyoDoc has been invited to on stage to music. Even though Eurasiadoc co-production meetings he faces difficulty understanding on a number of occasions, and the rhythm of songs he is unable OpyoDoc’s project ‘Abastumani, to hear, he never gives up on his The Last Resort’ was selected dream. The few square metres of for Doc Leipzig and PitchDoc. In wood that we call a stage represent 2016, the project was selected for for him a magic place where he the Hong Kong Financial Forum, can communicate with his parents where OpyoDoc started building To have a dream is natural and easy for all of us – but to follow one’s dream, without restrictions. new relationships within the Asian especially when no one else believes in it, is the fate of only a few. Nine-year- market. old Luka dreams of stepping onto the stage, because for him, dancing is the only way he can take his place in the world. The only environment he knows is the public school for deaf children where he studies and lives. Although it is very difficult for him to understand and learn the rhythm of the music, Luka never gives up. ‘Listen to the Silence’ observes Luka’s life in the hidden world Contact of a deaf society, following his journey as he overcomes failure, frustration OpyoDoc and disappointment to realise his dream at last. Nikolas Voigt +995 557 393 128 [email protected] Development Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary My Friend Gadhgadhi Tunisia’s most infamous terrorist Rafik Omrani is a director Majez Films is a Tunisian film Fall Grants 2016 was my friend 15 years ago. Should and film editor who resides in production company that produces ‘Sadiki Al Gadhgadhi’ / Tunisia, Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic I be discreet? Should I remain Tunisia. He began his career with and supports films that are unconcerned? Chokri Belaïd, a marketing and communication actively engaged in society. Majez Genre: Animation, Creative Documentary, Docufiction assassinated by my one-time oriented scholarship, then passionately supports creative Rafik Omrani Interests: Politics, Social Issues friend, was an activist, a lawyer accumulated experience in projects with original aesthetics Director / Producer and a human rights defender, who fiction, documentary and short and innovative form. Kamel Gadhgadhi, the most infamous terrorist in Tunisia during the frequently pleaded in trials during animation filmmaking in parallel years 2013 and 2014, turns out to have been a close friend of the Ben Ali’s regime. Belaïd was a with his work as financial director. director at college. The latter begins to reflect on terrorism. charismatic man and a remarkable In 2011, he decided to devote leader, but especially a poet and a himself entirely to cinema. ‘Fallega great intellectual. His murderer is 2011’ (2011), his first medium- someone I know, a man the same length documentary film, was age as me. There is an awkwardness shown at numerous international that I can’t define: the awkwardness festivals, demonstrations and art of being the friend of the killer of institutions around the world, and my idol. It is proven that it doesn’t won five awards including the First only happen to others! This film is Work Award from the Tetouan research work into the phenomenon International Mediterranean Film of religious extremism and the Festival and the Osman Sanban creeping radicalisation of Tunisian Award from the Festival of African youth. It’s not a bio-pic of a terrorist. Cinema in Marseille. ‘White Based on a personal story, this is a Doves’, his first feature-length A few days after the assassination of left-wing Tunisian militant Chokri Belaïd film about the damaging effects of documentary, was produced in 2016. in early 2013, the Tunisian media started to talk about a prime suspect, a religious extremism on the minds of Omrani has produced a number of certain Kamel Gadhgadhi. Two weeks later, director Rafik Omrani stumbles our young people. documentaries for television and for upon a picture of the alleged killer. To Omrani’s great surprise, Gadhgadhi is a the benefit of many Tunisian and friend from his university days. A kind of patchwork emerges, one that defines international organisations. In 2012, a more finely textured image of Gadhgadhi... Tuesday, 4 February, 2014: The he was elected a member of the Tunisian Minister of the Interior announces that Gadhgadhi was killed during executive board of the Association security operations. of Tunisian Filmmakers. Contact Majez Production Rafik Omrani +216 25 433 365 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary On the Hillsides How is life in Algeria? Many young After graduating from high school, In love with cinema, when it offers Fall Grants 2016 people in the country stands where he majored in science a perspective on our lives, when it ‘Sur les Collines’ / Algeria, France, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 somewhere between good and and biology in 1971, Abdallah pushes us, moves us, and open us evil, between submission and Badis started his working life as up to others, we created Cactusco Runtime: 90 min the temptation for clandestine a steelworker in Lorraine, then Films in 2012 and we wish to bear Abdallah Badis Genre: Creative Documentary, Road Trip exile – for one inevitably ends up engaged in other pursuits until the responsibility of producing films Director / Producer Interests: Identity, Social Issues, Youth knocking at one of these doors 1979. Whether in theatre or film, with certainty, enthusiasm and when one is denied existence, is he always tries to lend a voice to exigency. We like features that push A journey sketching real life in Algeria today through an encounter stifled, is looking for a reason to live; unnamed people, the world he the boundaries of cinema and that between urban youth and people living deep in the countryside. when one is wandering around in comes from, staging common offer new ways to tell stories, for nothingness. As I met with some of folks and their special ways: their we believe cinema is derived from these young people and placed my gestures at work and in daily life, the individual perspective. Cactusco fantasised Algeria up against their their ordinary words and silences. Films produced Abdallah Badis’s real-life Algeria drowning in dreams This led Badis quite naturally to feel first feature-length film, ‘The of elsewhere, it dawned on me that the strong need to bear witness to Foreign Son’ (2015) and is currently there was plenty beyond the loss the lives, mutations and upheavals working on his second feature, ‘On of joie de vivre to dig up, to explore of our times through storytelling in the Hillsides’. and bring to light in a film. Beyond cinema. the oft-repeated “y’en a marre” (“we’re sick and tired”), beyond the expected, I realised I could film from inside and be open to surprises, capturing material for a buoyant A wind of liberty called the Arab Spring has been blowing in this part of the and grave film that could tell a story world. Algeria remains uninvolved. Does this mean everything is all right of our days. there? How is the Algerian populus? How do they live? Seven young men and women aged between 20 and 30 ask themselves: What does it mean to be Algerian? They leave Wahran, their home city, to go deep into the countryside. Their journey, in the most beautiful season, will take the pulse of the real nation of Algeria.

Contact Cactusco Films Abdallah Badis +33 387 303 648 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Experimental or Essay On Trials In our recent film ‘Out on the Street’, Born to an Egyptian father and a Seen is a Cairo-based film house Spring Grants 2016 performers re-enacted scenes Polish mother, Jasmina Metwaly that produces and supports film ‘En Mohakamat’ / Egypt, Qatar / Arabic from their own experiences and is a Cairo-based artist and and media work, fulfilling an en-acted improvised scenes that filmmaker, and member of the active role in society’s ongoing Runtime: 75 min brought into effect a new imagined Mosireen collective. She works in social and political discourse. Seen Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk Genre: Creative Documentary reality created through the video and film, with people and endeavors to work for the full Directors / Producers performance itself. This terminology their histories, texts, archives, representation, self-realisation and In an attempt to question the legal realm, ‘On Trials’ explores the of enactment comes from the legal images, scripts and drawings. positive engagement of all groups performative aspect of the law in Egypt through performances by realm to describe how laws receive She is interested in how stories who are marginalised, whether judges, lawyers, defendants, journalists and law students. their legitimacy through the very create stories, and how they due to gender, urban centrism, act of being spoken. In ‘On Trials’, leave the space of one reality economic restriction, or religion. we want to explore further the and enter another, intertwining Seen is interested and involved in creative power of enactment. The the boundaries of both. Rooted the development, implementation, law is in itself a performance, where in performance and theatre, her presentation and distribution of different actors are given roles of works focus on process-based creative projects reaching beyond judge, lawyer or cameraman, each practices that have a social function the common aesthetics and playing their theatrical part in that generates tension between confinements of the moving image. accordance with pre-determined participants and audiences. Seen aims to open up cinema and rules. Unlike other theatres, this filmmaking to innovative forms of performance creates a reality that Philip Rizk is a filmmaker and interaction with the public, dealing has very serious implications on life writer based in Cairo. Together with topics and stories that are as we know it, determining legal with Jasmina Metwaly, he directed either needed or suggested by from illegal, right from wrong and the feature film ‘Out on the Street’ society. We believe that cinema is The enacted. The robe. The absurd. Failed precedents. ‘On Trials’ is a film deciding between life and death. In (2015), which premiered at the the art of the visual story, and all about realms of law that people encounter on a daily basis. In Egypt¨ the legal ‘On Trials’, we want to explore the Berlin International Film Festival our attention is tuned to promoting system is a labyrinth of enactments carried out by appointed actors. Judges realms where performance-making and was part of the German pavilion aesthetic quality and art in the in their robes. Lawyers wearing suits. Prisoners in white, blue and orange. and law-making overlap. at the Venice Biennale. Rizk is a stories we produce. Guards in dark uniforms guarding the courts. Cameramen taking quick shots member of the Mosireen video of the ongoing performance. Tailors never running out of business. ‘On Trials’ collective. His texts have appeared is a work-in-progress that visits different threads of what makes up this realm online, in journals and in collected of the law. volumes, including ‘Uncommon Contact Grounds – New Media and Critical Seen Films Practices in the Middle East and Philip Rizk / Jasmina Metwaly North Africa’ (IB Tauris, 2014). He is +20 100 160 4367 currently working with Metwaly on a [email protected] / new project entitled ‘On Trials’. [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary Ouaga Girls All transitions are fragile. With this Theresa Traore Dahlberg Momento Film was founded in 2011 Fall Grants 2016 film, I seek to capture that trembling was born in 1983 and spent her by director and producer David ‘Du courage’ / Burkina Faso, Sweden, Qatar / French / 2017 time before choices are made, the childhood on the Swedish island Herdies. Since its start, Momento time before everything will change – of Öland and in Burkina Faso. She Film has established itself as one of Runtime: 80 min when dreams, desires and courage studied at the New School in New Sweden’s most vibrant independent Theresa Traore Dahlberg Genre: Coming of age, Creative Documentary get mixed up with opinions, fears York and at the Academy documentary production companies, Director Interests: Identity, Social Issues, Women, Youth and society’s expectations of what of Dramatic Arts. Her ground- producing numerous short and a woman should be. The feeling of breaking graduation film, ‘Taxi feature-length documentaries and A group of young girls from Burkina Faso meet in Ouagadougou to no longer being a child, but not yet Sister’ (2011), about a female taxi establishing a strong international study to become car mechanics. ‘Ouaga Girls’ is a poetic story of owning your life – and still feeling driver in Dakar, was screened at network. To date, the company sisterhood, life choices and the struggles of finding your own path. like you are on top of the world on festivals worldwide. Dahlberg has has produced 15 films, which a Saturday when you are out with been active in several film and art have premiered in some of the your friends. Your friends are your projects around the world and is most prestigious film festivals everything, and life keeps happening constantly pushing the boundaries in the world, among them the David Herdies to you while you are trying to figure of art, sculpture and filmmaking. International Documentary Festival Producer yourself out. With ‘Ouaga Girls’, I She is now studying for an MFA at Amsterdam, the Hot Docs Canadian want to capture an intriguing and the Royal Institute of Art in Sweden. International Documentary inspiring growing-up story with ‘Ouaga Girls’ marks her feature- Film Festival, CPH:DOX and the warmth, laughter and depth. length filmmaking debut. Gothenburg Film Festival, and has successfully moved into producting fiction films, with Simón Mesa Soto’s short film ‘Madre’ premiering in the Official Competition at the Festival de Cannes. The sun shines over an open garage in Burkina Faso’s capital, where Bintou is lacquering a car door. She is attending a feminist-initiated education centre for women who have been ostracised by society. The centre aims to strengthen these women’s independence by teaching them a profession traditionally reserved for men – that of the car mechanic. Bintou isn’t sure this is the vocation for her, but she has a four-year-old daughter and the school is a way to secure income. In the shade outside, Chantalle waits Contact her turn. A good student, she is proud of her future profession, but the Momento Film disappearance of her mother triggers recurrent panic attacks and the school David Herdies is now her only refuge. During their last year at school, Bintou and Chantalle +46735082418 and their friends become increasingly complex and mysterious, drawing us [email protected] deeper into the large and small choices that will shape their lives. Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Experimental or Essay Ouroboros As a Palestinian, a nomad, someone Basma Alsharif is an artist and Idioms Film was established in Fall Grants 2016 from nowhere and everywhere, I filmmaker of Palestinian origin who Ramallah in 2004 with the intention Palestine, France, Qatar / Arabic, English / 2017 am deeply invested in making developed her practice nomadically. of developing the cinematic capacity work that challenges nationalism, Her films and installations centre of independent film production in Runtime: 73 min radically confronts us with the on the human condition beyond Palestine by improving accessibility Basma Alsharif Genre: Creative Documentary future, and questions how we nationalism. Her major exhibitions to production facilities, international Director / Screenwriter Interests: War define humanity in the modern include Les rencontres de la film markets and financing. Recent age. This film is an attempt to photographie d’Arles; Les Modules titles include Mohanad Yaqubi’s Death as birth, history as the present, the end as the beginning... reconcile the passage of time, the at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Here ‘Off Frame AKA Revolution Until disappearance of nature and the and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Victory’ (2015); ‘Suspended Time’ renaming of cities; a succession of New York; The Jerusalem Show Al (2014), a programme of nine short suppressions and reinstatements of Ma’amal Foundation in Palestine; films marking the 20th anniversary borders, governments, truces and Videobrasil; and Manifesta 8. She of the signing of the failures in peace agreements; and has won a Jury Prize at the Sharjah Agreement; Ramzi Hazboun’s ‘Pink Mohanad Yaqubi, a failure to prevent a humanitarian Biennial, the Fundacion Marcelino Bullet’ (2014); and Khaled Jarrar’s Emilie Dudognon, Eyal Sivan crisis. My subjective experience Botin Award and the LOOP Fair Prize. ‘Infiltrators’ (2012). Producers of statelessness and constant migration fuels my work. As a director of predominantly short films, through my work I question the concept of knowledge through a phenomenological approach Diego Marcon is a man with a broken heart who journeys into the heart of to the Palestinian question. The the human condition on a single day that stretches from Native American incarnation of an absence of identity territory, to the ancient city of Matera, to a castle in Brittany, and the ruins is a manner of looking beyond a of the Gaza Strip. Ouroboros is an homage to Gaza and to hoping beyond singular experience and of exploring hopelessness. the repercussions of history or politics in daily life, as well as the changes in geopolitics that we carry from the past to the future.

Contact Idioms Film Mohanad Yaqubi +970 2297 6157 [email protected] www.idiomsfilm.com Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary Plot 35 Above all, ‘Plot 35’ is the story of Eric Caravaca was trained at Les Films du Poisson is a French Fall Grants 2016 a secret sister. Christine was my the School of Performing Arts in cinema production company ‘Carré 35’ / France, Qatar / French / 2017 parents’ firstborn; she arrived before Rouen and at the Actor’s Studio. created by Yaël Fogiel and Laetitia my brother and me. Her existence He appeared in plays directed by Gonzalez in 1995. Since 2006, under Runtime: 90 min and her death were hidden from Phillipe Adrien in the 1990s before the guidance of producer Estelle Eric Caravaca Genre: Creative Documentary us. Then, as happens in any family, being noticed onstage. His first Fialon, the company has developed Director secrets bubble to the surface. At major role in a feature-length film its production of documentary Wishing to reinstate the memory of an ill sister he never knew, some point in my life, it became was in Diane Bertrand’s ‘Un samedi films for both television and the director Eric Caravaca takes us into the heart of a fascinating human clear to me that I bear a sadness sur la terre’ (1996), a singular work cinema on an international scale. quest. that is not my own. But whose is about fate. Caravaca went on to The company has a catalogue of it? Why has this sadness reached work with several great directors like more than 100 titles, which have out to me? This is what I have tried François Dupeyron (‘The Officers’ been released and sold in France to discover in writing this film. Ward’, 2001), Patrice Chéreau (‘His and around the world. Among Through this very personal story, Brother’ 2003) and Marjane Satrapi them are ’s ‘On Laetitia Gonzalez it is indeed about all of us that I and Vincent Paronnaud (‘Chicken Tour’ (2010), Julie Bertuccelli’s Producer wish to speak. This is why my own with Plums’, 2011). He directed ‘Since Otar Left’ (2003) and ‘The search follows unexpected detours his first feature-length film, ‘The Tree’ (2010) and Michale Boganim’s that lead to a wider, more universal Passenger’ in 2004; it was selected ‘Land of Oblivion’ (2011). Les Films reflection on life and death, on for the Critics’ Week a the Festival du Poisson has displayed a strong images and memory, on privacy and de Cannes and the Venice Film commitment to an exacting cinema on history. Festival. His upcoming feature- that has earned both popular and length documentary, ‘Plot 35’, is critical success and won a string of slated for release in 2017. international awards, including five Plot 35 is a place that was never mentioned in my family; it is where my Césars, Best Director and Caméra elder sister, who died aged three, is buried. The sister about whom I was told d’Or awards at the Festival de nothing, or nearly nothing, and of whom my parents had oddly never kept a Cannes, and Jean Vigo and Louis single photograph. It was to make up for the missing images that I decided Delluc Awards. Always curious to to make this film. Thinking that I would simply chronicle a forgotten life, discover new talent, the company in fact I opened up the hidden door to a past that I was unaware of, to the continues to collaborate with subconscious memory that lies inside each of us and who makes us what renowned directors like Amalric, we are. Bertuccelli and Emmanuel Finkiel, Contact while still producing the work of Les Films du Poisson first-time filmmakers, and exploring Laetitia Gonzalez new media and original television [email protected] series. Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary Republic of Silence Throughout my life, I have enjoyed is a Syrian No Nation Films is a film production Fall Grants 2016 playing around with people’s director and producer who has company that specialises in Syria, Germany, France, Qatar / Arabic, English obsessions with stereotyping each resided in Berlin since 2013. In 2002, creative documentary films for the other according to religion, ethnicity, she co-founded Proaction Film, international market, founded in Genre: Biography, Creative Documentary gender, nationality or language. the first independent production Berlin in 2014 by and Diana El Jeiroudi Interests: Immigration, Politics, Social Issues Because people are rarely able company in Syria after the Diana El Jeiroudi. Over the years, Director to locate me within a religion or Damascus Spring. Her filmography the company has co-produced She grew up in a land of dictators and surveillance. Today, from her ethnicity, I have had a safe space includes ‘The Pot’ (2005), which films with partners from Canada, exile, she is reclaiming the images and sounds of Syrians, half of in which to breathe and exist, but was selected for the Yamagata Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany whom are scattered around the world. still remain unnoticed. Unlike the International Documentary Film and Yemen. Its award-winning majority of people around the world, Festival, and ‘Dolls, A Woman from documentaries encompass I enjoyed staying unidentified: I Damascus’ (2007) and ‘Morning a variety of topics, including was anonymous. Today, I am a Fears, Night Chants (2012), both of women’s rights, cultural identity, Syrian – and that is all I am for which screened at the International radicalisation and life in the midst Orwa Nyrabia, Camille Laemlé everyone, Syrians and non-Syrians Documentary Festival Amsterdam. of war. No Nation Films productions Producers alike. The sense of rage I feel today In 2008, she co-founded the DOX have been released theatrically is immense, for, once again, I BOX Film Festival, followed by the in , France, , , must negotiate a space where I DOX BOX Association in Berlin. El Portugal, Spain and the UK, and can exist and breathe – a necessity Jeiroudi’s work has been recognised have been screened in more than that means struggling against the through various awards, including 150 film festivals around the world, stereotypes created by everyone an EDN Award and a Katrin including at Amsterdam, Busan, around me. It is my individual Cartlidge Award. She has served Cannes, Locarno, London, New York, responsibility today to show that as a juror for several film festivals Sundance and Toronto. Its films She grew up in the lands of dictators and surveillance, where images are Syria is not a YouTube video, nor and funds, including Sundance, have been broadcast worldwide on censored, photos are burned, thoughts are discreet, and mouths are kept is it a newsflash; it is neither the the International Documentary numerous television networks, as shut. Forty years later, from her exile in Germany, Diana El Jeiroudi is a cradle of civilisation, nor a flag, Festival Amsterdam and One World, well as on premium VOD platforms. documentary filmmaker reclaiming the images and sounds of the Syrian nor a symbol of radicalism, war or and she sat on the jury of L’Oeil No Nation Films’ productions have land and its people, half of whom are scattered around the world. In this liberation. d’Or, the first documentary award won a considerable number of emotionally charged carefully crafted film, El Jeiroudi presents a first-person at the Festival de Cannes, in 2015. awards, including a Grierson Award account of how she ended up in Berlin, how she grew up to internalise a She is a member of the Deutsche and a Sundance Grand Jury Prize. world of silence and oppression, how she learned to negotiate her existence Filmakademie. Contact and well-being in the face of a mutating enemy, how she bore witness and No Nation Films became involved, how she revolted and claimed herself – and how cinema Orwa Nyrabia has saved her life. +493023925383 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary The Desert, The conflict that followed the Saeed Al Batal was born in Launched in early 2013, Bidayyat Fall Grants 2016 uprising in Syria changed the life Tartous, Syria, in 1988, and is a for Audiovisual Arts is a civil of every Syrian in a most extreme citizen journalist, photographer company that specialises in 1000 Days way, but the stories of individuals and filmmaker. He is a founder producing short and feature- are lost among news reports. ‘The of Humans of Syria, the online length documentaries made by Saeed Al Batal, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 Desert, 1000 Days’ provides unique gallery Sam Lenses, and many emerging Syrian filmmakers who Ghiath Al Haddad access to a place on the frontline: other projects. He has worked as a wish to question and reflect on Directors Runtime: 120 min the besieged city of Douma – a reporter for several radio stations, the reality they witness from Genre: Biography, Creative Documentary, Road Trip revolution stronghold – which has including NPR and Denmark Radio. their own distinct points of view. Interests: Identity, Immigration, Politics, Social Issues, War, Youth witnessed the worst humanitarian As a platform for exchange and crisis since World War II. The Ghiath Al Haddad was born education, Bidayyat seeks to Two artists become entwined in the affairs of the besieged city of spectator is thrown into the world in Syria in 1989 and graduated contribute to the re-emergence of a Gouta in this personal story about a group of young people in Syria. of the Syrian revolution as seen from the faculty of Fine Art at the documentary cinema in the Middle through the eyes of a small group University of Damascus in 2013. A East that relates to and interacts Saeed Al Batal of friends; the film becomes a prism videographer and sound recordist with its societies. Bidayyat develops Screenwriter for their dreams, fears, loves, wars with directing and producing and produces its film projects and battles between life and death. experience in Syria and Lebanon, Al through its own funding, as well We see how they struggle to make Haddad has worked with local and as by acquiring regional funds and their art exist in a world undergoing international NGOs, teaching visual through international co-production. destruction. As Saeed Al Batal, one communication and art therapy to of the main subjects and co-director refugee children in Lebanon. He has of the film, says: “The image is the also been involved with numerous last defence line against time; it is non-profit organisations, such Mohammad Ali Atassi my defence line against reality, my as Humans of Syria, with graphic Producer tool for preserving my balance and a design work and short films that ‘Al Sahra’ is a feature documentary that follows art students Saeed and Milad, way to elude the question: What are have been featured on websites who decide to leave Damascus and go to Douma, a suburb under rebel we doing?”. and in exhibition spaces around the control. Over more than four years, the film depicts the two friends and their world. acquaintances as they go about their daily lives, capturing the transformation of the city of Douma and its people as they go through liberation, war, siege and hunger. More than 500 hours of footage was shot, and the men face Contact grave questions about life and death, revolution and armed struggle, dreams Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts and doubts, fear and love, and the use of art in a world facing destruction. Rola Kobeissi Saeed and Milad try to launch a graffiti art project in Douma, but things in +961 1 443 026 the besieged city take a turn for the worse after a chemical attack on eastern [email protected] Gouta. After he loses one of his friends, Milad decides to revive the art project with the help of his friends by painting colourful graffiti on the grey, devastated walls of the city. Saeed and Milad finally get out of Douma and seek refuge in Beirut, where they face loss, exile and hope. Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary The Forgotten As I am the daughter of two Ghada Terawi was born to Odeh Films is an independent Spring Grants 2016 Palestinian militants, the idea of Palestinian militants in Beirut in film production company based in ‘Al Mansi’ / Palestine, Qatar / Arabic, English, Japanese / 2018 revolution was part of my childhood, 1972. She grew up between Beirut, Ramallah. The company focuses on history and personality. I was Tunis and Cairo, and graduated from producing creative documentary Runtime: 90 min born in Beirut during the 1970s, a the American University of Cairo and author-driven narrative films. Ghada Terawi Genre: Biography period when the idea of “liberation” with a BA in International Relations. Odeh Films also provides production Director Interests: History, Identity was dominant. Contrary to what She currently lives in Palestine. services for filmmakers shooting in I see now in the eyes of those Terawi began working in the field Palestine, as well as distribution for A look at the life of Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese freedom fighter who who lived and worked with the of documentary filmmaking in independent films. gave up his life in Japan after joining the movement to liberate liberation movement, I remember 1998, and produced her first film, Palestine. how proud, enthusiastic, active ‘Staying Alive’, in 2001. Her other the Palestinians were when I was films include ‘What’s Next’ (2003), young. Most of those people – my ‘The Way Back Home’ (2006), ‘The father included – now feel helpless Last Station’ (2007), ‘Golden May Odeh and are very pessimistic. This made Pomegranate Seeds’ (2009), ‘On Air’ Producer me think about our situation as (2011) and ‘The Storyteller’ (2013). Palestinians, how lost and forgotten we have become. This is reflected in the situation of Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese man who also left his family, country and life for the sake of a liberation movement, and who ended up forgotten in a foreign country. I thought maybe it was A journey in the life of Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese freedom fighter and time to rediscover the compass member of the Japanese Red Army, who gave up his life in Japan to join the we have lost, and to try to answer Palestinian liberation movement. The film knits together a map of Okamoto’s some questions to which most journey through stories of Palestinian and Japanese people who passed Palestinians do not have answers. through Kozo’s life. Living the romantic dream of being a “world revolutionary” was a stage in Okamoto’s life, but being the lone surviving perpetrator of the Lod Airport Operation in 1972 was a turning point. Interrogation in Israeli Contact jails, a trial and 13 years in Israeli prisons marked his whole life and formed Odeh Films the person he is now. Being freed from prison after a prisoner-exchange May Odeh deal between Israel and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in +970 597 168 631 1985 took him on another journey, where he faced loss, insecurity, guilt and [email protected] betrayal. ‘The Forgotten’ seeks to reveal Okamoto’s life journey, which is full of contradictions: ups and downs, waiting and hope, pain and frustration. Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Experimental or Essay The Insomnia of I have always seen my city Born in Beirut in 1959, Mohamad PM Productions was established Spring Grants 2016 from an archeological point of Soueid is a Lebanese writer, in 2017 and is dedicated to the view, piecing together history, director and producer. Currently, production and co-production of a Serial Dreamer metropolitan architecture, society, he is Head of Documentary at Al creative/auteur documentaries politics, culture, humans, wars Arabiya News Channel. As a director, made by Arab filmmakers. Mohamad Soueid ‘Hanine Al Ghobar’ / Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic / 2018 and countless other things melded he has made several films, including Director / Screenwriter / Producer together in a chaos of harmony and ‘Tango of Yearning’ (1998), ‘Nightfall’ Runtime: 90 min delusion. This archeological mode (2000), ‘Civil War’ (2002) and ‘How Genre: Creative Documentary I have been interested in exploring Bitter, My Sweet’ (2010). In addition, through my films is an overarching Soueid has written the books A personal essay of dreams, images and clouds, built from visual structure that cherishes us, and ‘Postponed Cinema – Lebanese materials filmed over the last 15 years in different formats and yet from which we have inherited Films During the Civil War’ (1986), locations. our existing agony. In my new film, ‘O Heart – A Film Autobiography I would like to be removed from on the Late Movie Theatres of Old Pamela Ghanimeh my images to try to look at this Beirut’ (1996) and the novel ‘Cabaret Producer place I live in – this Beirut I love Souad’ (2004). and frequently leave just to go back again – as it looks to me: a present in the past tense. ‘The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer’ is a film about my past as well.

Facing his insomniac nature, the author of this film meets with several people, asking each one of them to tell him a story that will help him sleep – but this attempt goes on for years. After 15 years of shooting, interrupted on numerous occasions, none of the rushes – which were supposed to be edited and shaped into coherent, unified stories – have found their way into the intended film. Over the course of time, those rushes became dreams Contact that have haunted the director over the years. As dreams have no end, so a PM Productions film might have no end as well. Instead of making a film about a director’s Mohamad Soueid attempt to cure himself of insomnia, the project becomes a film essay on a +961 3 729 527 director’s voyage in time and a yearning for dreams made up of images and [email protected] recollections gathered over the passing years. Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary This Is Congo In late 2008, I travelled to the Daniel McCabe is a Vision Film was founded in 2006 Spring Grants 2016 Democratic Republic of the Congo cinematographer, photographer by producer Geoff McLean and has USA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Qatar / English, French, Lingala, as a photographer during the and director based in New York and since produced content for almost Swahili / 2017 CNDP rebellion. After experiencing The Democratic Republic of Congo. every major American record label firsthand the complexity of the His work has appeared in National and advertising agency. Clients Daniel McCabe Runtime: 88 min situation on the ground, I began Geographic, , include brands such as Lexus, Director Genre: Creative Documentary drafting an outline that explored the BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN among Mercedes, Jeep, Adidas, Powerade, Interests: Environment, History, Social Issues cycles of violence that plague this others.’This Is Congo’ is Daniel’s first Budweiser and Coca-Cola, and country and the components that feature-length documentary. Daniel artists including Rihanna, Kanye An unfiltered look into the lives of three people who are surviving support them. I returned in 2011 to is represented by Redux Pictures for West, Drake and Lana Del Rey. amid the most recent cycle of conflict in the Democratic Republic of team up with veteran Congolese his photo-graphic work. Having won numerous awards and Congo – the M23 rebellion. field producer Horeb Bulambo. We accolades in various short-format cast a wide net across the Kivu genres, including a Grammy Award region, searching for stories that nomination, Vision is now focusing Geoff McLean would help us understand the cause on creating independent narrative Producer and effect that perpetuates these feature films and feature-length cycles of conflict. In 2012, the M23 documentaries that revolve around rebellion ignited and during this social and political issues. time we met the four people that would later form the backbone of the films narrative. Mama Romance, Hakiza, Mamadou and Colonel Kasongo, all of whom live the story of a country plagued by instability and exploitation. Their dedication ‘This Is Congo’ is an unblinking, unfiltered look into one of the world’s longest- and desire to share their stories standing ongoing wars and those who are surviving within it. With over three despite the risk is bold, and I hope years of heart-stopping footage, this feature-length documentary challenges ‘This Is Congo’ does them the justice the Western idea of the Congo, never shying away from the violence and they deserve. atrocities that cycle through this breathtaking landscape. With the powerful voices of three fearless characters – a mineral dealer, a national army Contact commander and an internally displaced survivor of war – we begin to see the Vision Film Co. paradox of the Congo: beauty and brutality illuminated under darkness. Geoff McLean +1 323 719 7919 [email protected] Post-Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Feature Documentary Trophy Endangered African species, like Shaul Schwarz is a documentary Pulse Films excels in producing Fall Grants 2016 the elephant, rhinoceros and lion, film director, cinematographer fiction films and music USA, UK, Qatar / English / 2017 march ever closer to extinction and award-wining photojournalist. documentaries that are provocative every year. Their devastating decline His feature-length documentary and redefining in their approach. Runtime: 90 min is fuelled by a global desire to ‘Narco Cultura’ (2013) premiered We work with the world’s leading Shaul Schwarz, Christina Clusiau Genre: Creative Documentary collect and consume these majestic at Sundance and screened at film directors and talent and collaborate Directors animals. ‘Trophy’ investigates the festivals worldwide, including with some of the most influential ‘Trophy’ takes an in-depth look at the controversial multi-billion- powerhouse industries of big-game the Berlinale and the Hot figures in film to create eventful, dollar big-game hunting industry, unravelling the complex and hunting, breeding and wildlife Docs Canadian International genre-defying theatrical releases often misrepresented consequences of imposing economic value on conservation. Through the eyes of Documentary Film Festival. He has and television. Pulse’s film division animals. impassioned individuals who drive shot and directed content for TNT, began by redefining the music doc these industries, the film grapples the Discovery Channel, the History genre, giving documentaries like with the complex consequences Channel and CNN. Schwarz also Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s of imposing economic value on regularly contributes photography seminal LCD Soundsystem film Shaul Schwarz animals. What are the ethical to ‘TIME’ magazine and ‘National ‘Shut Up and Play the Hits’ (2012) Screenwriter implications of treating animals as Geographic’. Based in New York a cinematic edge that opened the commodities? Do breeding, farming City, he is currently producing short band up to new audiences, while and hunting offer some of the few film content for online publications Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s Nick remaining options to conserve while developing his third feature- Cave documentary ‘20,000 Days on these animals before it is too late? length documentary. Earth’ (2014) won two Sundance Awards and a BAFTA nomination. Christina Clusiau is a documentary Marc Silver’s ‘Who is Dayani Cristal?’ filmmaker, cinematographer and (2013) won two awards at Sundance, Julia Nottingham photojournalist based in New York and Lovelace and Southern’s Blur ‘Trophy’ takes an in-depth look at the multi-billion dollar industry behind big- Producer City. In 2013, Christina co-founded doc ‘No Distance Left to Run’ (2010) game hunting, animal farming and breeding, both in Africa and the USA. The Reel Peak Films, a production was nominated for a Grammy film explores the complex consequences of imposing economic value on wild company that specialises in short Award. Dan Cutfortha and Jane animals, in particular rare and threatened species such as the lion, elephant and long-form documentary films, Lipsitz’s ‘Katy Perry – Part of Me and rhino. Is it cruel or wrong to treat wild animals as commodities? Or does commercials and television content 3D’ (2012) was the fourth-highest- breeding, farming and hunting them perhaps provide the only certain way to made with cinematic quality and grossing music documentary of protect them? journalistic integrity. Clusiau shot all time. The company’s recent Contact the Emmy-nominated web series ‘A credits include Rob Egger’s ‘The Pulse Films Year in Space’, in partnership with Witch’ (2015) and Michal Marczak’s Julia Nottingham ‘TIME’ magazine’s Red Border Films, acclaimed documentary ‘All These [email protected] as well as the feature documentary Sleepless Nights’ (2016), both of ‘Aida’s Secrets’, which had its which won Best Director Awards premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian at Sundance, and Andrea Arnold’s International Documentary Film ‘American Honey’ (2016). Festival in 2016. Short Narrative

Born in the Maelstrom Clouds Disruption Green Eyes Kashta The Dog’s Children The Key The President’s Visit To the One Who Didn’t Give Me Life

Short Experimental or Essay

I Have Been Watching You All Along Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Short Narrative Born in the Maelstrom What drew me to adapting the story Meryam Joobeur is a Tunisian Founded in Montreal in 2012, Art Spring Grants 2016 of ‘Naissance de Rebecca à l’ère filmmaker based in Montreal. She & Essai aims to offer creators the Tunisia, Canada, Qatar / English / 2017 des tourments’ was the chance is a graduate of Mel Hoppenheim means to express their vision to reflect on the human condition School of Cinema in Montreal. Her of cinema and life. We strive Runtime: 25 min through the perspective of women first documentary, ‘Gods, Weeds to develop unconventional and Meryam Joobeur Genre: Adaptation, Coming of age of colour. There is a tendency in & Revolutions’ (2012), explores provocative films that will retain Director / Screenwriter Interests: Identity, Social Issues, Women cinema to view historical events themes of memory through their relevance many years from through the lens of patriarchy, Alzheimer’s and the Tunisian now. To date, Art & Essai has Rebecca, an 18-year-old biracial girl, searches for liberation from an connecting them to a man’s journey revolution, and was screened produced a dozen short films imaginary world shaped by her black mother’s painful past. to fight or survive injustice. I wanted internationally, winning several and three feature films that have to explore Rebecca’s reality as a awards, including the Best Canadian been well-received in Canada and young, biracial woman, the fears Documentary prize at the DOXA internationally. she inherited from her mother, and International Documentary Festival. her personal hopes. Joobeur has been a participant Hany Ouichou of the Producer’s Network of the Producer Carthage International Film Festival, the Berlinale Talent Lab, the Rawi Screenwriter’s Lab and the TIFF Talent Lab.

Inspired by the novel ‘Naissance de Rebecca à l’ère des tourments’ by Québécoise author Marie-Claire Blais, ‘Born in the Maelstrom’ is an impressionistic coming-of-age story of an 18-year-old biracial girl named Rebecca and her struggle against racism, oppression and the karmic ties that haunt the human spirit. The film follows Rebecca as she endures her last days on an all-female commune with her black mother Vénus.

Contact Art & Essai Hany Ouichou +151 4661 0719 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Short Narrative Clouds ‘Clouds’ is set in 1978, two years Muzna Almusafer was born Based in the UAE, Europe and the Fall Grants 2016 after the Dhofar rebellion in the in Muscat. Her admiration for USA, Film Solutions is a group of ‘Ghoyoom’ / Oman, Qatar / Jibali / 2017 south of Oman. The project reflects images began at an early age experienced creative producers who my fascination with the culture of through her father, a painter and share the goal of creating premium Runtime: 17 min the south – my dearest childhood photographer. She graduated from films and television content in the Muzna Almusafer Genre: Short Narrative remembrance is of visiting the Kuwait University majoring in Middle East. The company likes to Director / Screenwriter Interests: History, Politics mountains every summer, loving Mass Communication with a minor work with the best and brightest the closeness I experienced with in Political Science, and studied creative minds and loves investing A leopard hunter in a traditional village in the mountains goes the inhabitants. I always wished Swedish Cinema and Television its time and energy to nurture up- through a transformation. in those days that I could become Culture at Stockholm University. and-coming directors, writers and a Jibbali myself. For me, this film Her first short film, ‘Niqab’, won the producers. Veteran producer Paul is a journey that takes us inside a student competition short at the Miller and Stephen Strachan have tribal society that is undergoing a Gulf Film Festival in 2010. ‘Cholo’ been working in the Gulf region for transformation, and an opportunity (2013) won the Best Script prize at the past six years. They met at the Stephen Strachan to explore Oman cinematically from the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, had its Doha Film Institute, where Paul Producer a new angle. premiere at the Dubai International was Director of Film Financing and Film Festival, and was screened Stephen ran a creative development at several festivals and institutes. team dedicated to helping Qatar’s ‘PASHK’ and ‘The Goats of Dana’, filmmakers tell their stories. Both two creative documentaries that wanted to invest more time in the Almusafer collaborated on, were Middle East, and they set up Film screened in the DOX Film festival in Solutions in early 2016. They have Copenhagen and KIFAK in Tunisia, since been joined by Canadian In 1978, in the south of Oman some time after the Dhofar Rebellion, Ghafali and at the Women Deliver World producer Sahar Yousefi in the UAE. is a widower and war veteran who lives with his daughter and son in a Conference. In 2016, Almusafer Miller and Strachan will produce traditional village on Samhan Mountain. Ghafali faces pressure from his tribe participated with her project ‘Clouds’ ‘Scales’, Saudi director Shahad to kill a leopard that has threatened the village – pressure that becomes all at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Ameen’s first feature-lengt film, in the greater when he decides not to kill the animal, instead setting it free. the Amman Project Market. the spring of 2017.

Contact Muzna Almusafer +968 9819 1606 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Short Narrative Disruption Life moves non-stop, and that is Feyrouz Serhal obtained her Roummana is a burgeoning Fall Grants 2016 what defines it. Movement is also Master’s degree in Film and Screen production boutique with a ‘Tshweesh’ / Lebanon, Germany, Spain, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 what defines cinema. Like life, Studies from Goldsmiths College revolutionary flair. Its intent is cinema moves; it does not end University of London, after having to scout out and provide quality Runtime: 14 min when the credits roll. In Beirut, worked extensively as director content and production services Feyrouz Serhal Genre: Based on a True Story, Thriller Lidia continues the walk begun in and producer at some of the most for filmmakers, independent visual Director / Screenwriter / Producer Interests: War Milan in Michelangelo Antonioni’s prominent Arab television channels artists, independent musicians and ‘La Notte’ in 1961; just as she felt in the Middle East. She has also broadcasters in the Middle East. The World Cup begins and the people of Beirut are excited – but the nostalgic in an old neighbourhood written and directed several Roummana’s mission is to research highly anticipated event is disrupted by strange audio waves that in Milan then, now Lidia walks and independent short video works. and acquire progressive ideas from make way for a much bigger live event. fears for the old buildings of Beirut. Serhal is now the managing director the MENA region and to facilitate When she looks up and sees the of Roummana, a newly formed their development into various planes over Milan in 1961, she does production boutique based in Beirut. formats for cinema, television and not know that, many years in the She is currently developing ‘I Am the web. The focus is on making Lara Abu Saifan, future, she will walk in Beirut and Here But You Can’t See Me’, her this content viable and accessible Felipe Lage Coro, look up to see Israeli planes. In first feature film as a director. She is to Arab audiences without Stefan Gieren ‘Disruption’, I accompany Lidia, as a also working on producing her most compromising quality. Producers human being and an artist, as she recent short film, ‘Disruption’. leads me into myself, and into the resilient city that has always faced the worst fears.

Today, the FIFA World Cup championship begins. The people of Beirut have eagerly anticipated the big event, but for some reason the signal of the match is disrupted on all channels. Meanwhile, the city is engulfed by strange, increasingly violent sounds. Soon the people realise an Israeli attack is in progress, but instead of running away and hiding, they find they now have the opportunity to witness a much bigger live event from the tops of buildings. The people on the various roofs are in a good position to watch the Contact attack, while those lower down try to find spots higher up. While Israel sends Roummana messages to leave the city, a happy song plays on the radio and a girl of 10 is Feyrouz Serhal on a swing, flying between the balcony and the open air. +961 3 947 770 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Short Narrative Green Eyes I love films that contain within Abdullah Al-Mulla grew up in Spring Grants 2016 them the heart and blood of a Qatar until moving abroad to pursue ‘Al-’Ouyoon Al-Khadraa’’ / Qatar / Arabic / 2018 writer – films that love all their his university studies. He became characters and do not belittle any involved in film through the Doha Runtime: 10 min of them, rather giving them their Film Institute, where he has worked Abdullah Al-Mulla Genre: Drama due; films that respect the viewer on numerous short films since Director / Screenwriter / Producer and do not dumb things down or 2013. He wrote and directed the The tireless struggle of a coma patient in the oceanic depths of his altogether neglect the existence of short film ‘Old Airport Road’ (2014), own reality, as he faces off against his own ego and the mysterious the audience. In shooting a film, I which explores the theme of care, monster that lives within. love to make it a process in which and ‘Yellow Nights’ (2015), a seven- all the team is involved, so that they minute, single-shot film. Currently, have a stake in working hard and Al-Mulla is working on ‘A Journey to/ making something beautiful, and from Love’, a screenplay related to that allows actors to express their the cosmic sense of a relationship, Mohammed Shibly characters as they themselves have which received a grant from the Producer come to know them. Qatari Film Fund and is now in post- production.

A blue-eyed coma patient swims from the end of a pier to the deepest point of the ocean of himself, where he meets his long-lost, yellow-eyed ego in a battle of wit and brawn – for control, for resolution, for truth. A daemon lingers about them whispering, slowly taking control, until he reveals himself. Now, the protagonist must make a decision. Will he rot on the ocean floor? Or will he soar through the ocean and up to the sky with the help of ego?

Contact Abdullah Al-Mulla +974 5589 8761 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Short Experimental or Essay I Have Been Watching This film is a result of my Rawda Al-Thani likes to spend Fall Grants 2016 explorations into and curiosity her time exploring places in Qatar about the beginnings of cinema where the nation’s past and present You All Along in Qatar. While I know the cinema landscapes have merged to form was present during my childhood, its current state. Through these Rawda Al-Thani ‘A’tarif Anany Baqeit Uraqibuk Taweelan’ / Qatar / No Dialogue / 2017 it rapidly lost its popularity when explorations she finds inspiration Director / Screenwriter I was very young so I only vaguely for her short films and art projects. Runtime: 10 min remember its existence. I only have She studied Communications at Genre: Arthouse the slightest memory of its location. Northwestern University in Qatar, What I do know is that it was a where she focused on Experimental A girl explores the forgotten memories of an abandoned cinema magical place that used to open its Filmmaking, Art Directing and through a trancelike journey into its past. vast doors for the sole purpose of Middle Eastern Studies. Her first engulfing patrons in its screens, so I short film was shot in Doha’s set out to find out why those doors abandoned Gulf Cinema and Kamal Aljafari are now locked. portrays the search for an answer to Producer the explorer’s questions of identity through her journey into that forgotten space.

A young woman wanders about an abandoned cinema, rummaging through its storerooms and curiously exploring the mechanical and celluloid detritus that has been left behind. A sense of transgression is in the air – the woman is, after all, trespassing – and she finds herself constantly being watched by several men who, we assume, oversee the disused property. This vague threat notwithstanding, she projects scraps of old footage, creating a freeform narrative all her own, breathing new life into forgotten artifacts. Contact Rawda Al-Thani [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Company Profile Short Narrative Kashta This project is a film I’ve been A.J. Al Thani is a Qatar-born Made up of talented, experienced Fall Grants 2016 wanting to make for a long time and filmmaker. Her love for movies and creative storytellers, Qatar / Arabic / 2016 I am very happy and lucky to finally and moviemaking began at the documentarians, animators, be doing it. I think we can all be age of six when she saw ‘Star Wars’ photographers and filmmakers, The Runtime: 12 min tough on our siblings from time to (1977) in the cinema in 1999. She Film House is an award-winning A.J. Al Thani Genre: Coming of age, Drama, Road Trip, Thriller time, and to see how putting aside began to pursue her dream of Doha-based film, video and multi- Director / Screenwriter Interests: Children, Youth differences by working together to being a filmmaker with the launch media production company unlike solve a problem, and exploring the of the Doha Film Institute. Her any other in the region. With a A father takes his two sons out on a trip to the desert to go hunting, different layers of these characters relationship with the Institute began wealth of local knowledge and but the results are not quite what he was expecting. to make them be compelling and in 2010 when she participated with Qatar’s community in mind, work together was the most fun I’ve in one of its first film workshops, the company is primed to foster had working on any project to date. which opened the door for many local talent and to redefine visual local filmmakers to pursue their storytelling in the region. We are a passion. For almost six years she home for high-calibre international Jaime Siordia has been developing her skills with productions and local productions. Producer the help of the Institute. ‘Kashta’ At The Film House, it is our was made through a grant from the ambition to raise the bar – technical Doha Film Institute. and artistic – for the film production industry in Qatar.

Out in the beautiful quiet of the windswept dunes, a man teaches his young sons the traditional desert skills of tracking and hunting. Frustration leads to an apparently harmless struggle between the two brothers – but then carelessness brings about sudden disaster. Alternating calm with calamity, adolescence with adulthood, and knowhow with panic, ‘Kashta’ captures a seemingly simple story about an innocent plan gone horribly wrong.

Contact The Film House Jaime Siordia +974 7791 0849 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Short Narrative The Dog’s Children I was staying in Istanbul. For five Layan Abdul Shakoor is a Saudi Fall Grants 2016 consecutive nights, two rabid filmmaker based in the Arabian ‘Atfal Alkalb’ / , Qatar / Arabic / 2017 neighbourhood dogs excessively Gulf. Hailing from a multicultural barked at daybreak. I was sleepless background, she aims to encompass Runtime: 15 min until the sixth night, when suddenly and empower the melting pot of Layan Abdul Shakoor Genre: Drama the dogs stopped barking. I stood Arabian culture and its divergent Director / Screenwriter / Producer next to my window, only to see roots in her films. Having recently An abusive Saudi father assigns his innocent and imaginative eight- a young boy yelling at them with graduated as valedictorian with year-old son the gruesome task of killing the rabid neighbourhood aggressive hand gestures. How did a BSc in Media Industries and dog. he learn such violence? Why does Technologies from Northwestern he need to be so intimidating? University, Abdul Shakoor Those questions echoed in my head worked as an assistant editor on for months. What further inspired Danielle Beverly’s feature-length ‘The Dog’s Children’ was hearing my documentary ‘Dusty Groove’ (2016), Reem Saad community’s stories of domestic interned with The Film House as Producer violence. What interests me most, a Production Assistant, and co- however, is how violence is often produced a short web-based ad for expressed through emotional Ooredoo. In 2015, Layan received torment, not through physical grants to produce Mariam Mahsud’s abuse, and this is what the film’s short film ‘Lor’, which featured triangular father-daughter-son in the Short Film Corner at the relationship aims to demonstrate. Festival de Cannes in 2016, and The father is an intimidating for ‘The Dog’s Children’, which is In Jeddah during the economically transformative year of 1973, a rabid presence lurking above both now in production. Currently, Layan neighbourhood dog catalyses the implosion of a disintegrating family. Fifty- children, keeping them on edge in is applying for various Master’s year-old Adel is perpetually enraged by The Dog’s piercing barking, but more their own home. Ultimately, the programmes in production and significantly, he fails to tame his temper in order to keep his family together. film’s undertones suggest that with development, and working as a His 18-year-old daughter Khadija is gradually going deaf, her only source of the persistence of such unfortunate freelancer while pursing her lifelong sensory pleasure the fainy howling of The Dog, while his eight-year-old son familial environments, violent youth passion of learning to play . Faisal is timid and naive, unfortunately finding himself stuck smack in the – just like that young Turkish boy – middle of a looming family war. When a bitter family argument erupts out of are inevitably born of circumstance. Contact bottled-up frustration, Adel bargains to kill two birds with one stone: he will Layan Abdul Shakoor toughen up his crybaby of a son by teaching him how to fire a gun in order to [email protected] kill The Dog. Will Faisal choose to silence his father’s wrath, or to preserve his sister’s only source of joy? Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Short Narrative The Key ‘The Key’ is a poetic exploration Ghassan Jaradat is a director Fall Grants 2016 of the struggles and anxieties and screenwriter based in Amman. ‘Fathi Moftah’ / Jordan, Germany, Qatar / Arabic, English / 2017 of displacement across several He is currently a resident writer generations, as well as what and director at Writers’ Cell, a Runtime: 10 min constitutes a home within such Middle Eastern creative writing Ghassan Jaradat Genre: Animation, Drama, Fantasy circumstances. Through the and creative content company, Director / Screenwriter / Producer Interests: Children, Identity, Social Issues utilisation of the fantastic, we as well as a freelance assistant follow the journey of a child refugee director for Telemax Productions. Fathi Moftah, a child refugee who is obsessed with collecting keys, becoming aware of the individual’s He specialises in creative directing finds a hidden door in his father’s key shop. right to freedom, and of the right to and conceptual design, and has return to one’s original homeland. turned many conventional projects The film presents a metaphor and into pieces of commercial art for an intricate web of symbols to prominent companies. He received portray a universal experience, a his bachelor’s degree in Media Arts Georg Neubert journey, that every refugee born in and Culture from Occidental College Producer displacement goes on – a journey in Los Angeles. During his studies marked by hope and despair, by he gained valuable experience from freedom and imprisonment, and by studying abroad in Prague. fantasy and reality.

Fathi Moftah, a child refugee, is obsessed with collecting keys. One day, while he is working at his father’s locksmith shop, he finds a hidden turquoise door behind the keys that cover the walls of the shop. The discovery of the mysterious door transforms Fathi’s collection into magical keys that give him access to many fantastical worlds. He goes on a journey, alternating between fantasy and reality, that causes chaos and havoc for his family. He unknowingly opens the wounds of his father, destroys what is dear to his mother, and steals what is left of home from his grandmother, all in the Contact process of learning of his right to return to his homeland. Ghassan Jaradat +962 798 066 208 [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Director’s Biography Short Narrative The President’s Visit “To truly laugh, you must be able Lebanese director and screenwriter IndieFlip is a creative development Spring Grants 2016 to take your pain, and play with Cyril Aris obtained an MFA from and production company dedicated ‘Ziyarat Alra’ees’ / Lebanon, USA, Qatar / Arabic / 2017 it” – Charlie Chaplin. It is that Columbia University. The last short to films that champion stories bittersweet pain of caring too much film he produced, ‘Submarine’ from diverse and underrepresented Runtime: 18 min for a country we call home that (2016), was in the official selection groups, characters of unlikely Cyril Aris Genre: Comedy, Drama, Satire drives the story of ‘The President’s of the Cinéfondation competition backgrounds and situations, and Director / Screenwriter Visit’, set in Lebanon’s political at the Festival de Cannes, as well content that crosses cultures. Our When the men in a fishing village learn of the secret upcoming visit deadlock, during which time the as the Toronto International Film mission is to creatively collaborate of their country’s president to its local soap shop, they embark on a Presidential seat had been vacant Festival, and won the Jury Prize with a milieu of talents and work never-ending struggle to maintain the perfect image of their town. for more than two years. This at the Dubai International Film together to deliver strong films absurdity is something you cry at, Festival. The last short he directed, with quality content. We strive to play with... and eventually laugh at. ‘Siham’ (2013), won a Jury Award protect the artist’s creative vision I find it inherently Lebanese to play for Best Short at the Palm Springs and integrity, putting stories first. with contradictions, so adopting International ShortFest. He is We develop original content and Mounia Akl a contrasting tone to the subject currently in post-production with are heavily involved in the creative Screenwriter matter is truthful to both place his first feature-length documentary, process from inception all the and identity. Comedy becomes a ‘The Swing’; his previous credits way to distribution. Our films are self-imposed remedy to make a include the television series ‘Beirut, set in different parts of the world situation more bearable, while our I Love You’ (2011-12) and the Yahoo (the U.S., the Philippines, Spain, lives simply pass by. But in this film, web series ‘Fasateen’ (2012), as well Indonesia and Lebanon) and have the townsfolk eagerly overdress as various other short films. Aris has played in several festivals worldwide and over-prepare for the coming taught Filmmaking and Film History and won numerous awards and of the President – for a better classes at Columbia University, grants (Directors Guild of America, Valerie Martinez, Marc Fadel In a small coastal fishing town where time stands still, Nino, a lonely future, for a better life. Because this NHSI at Northwestern University, Entertainment Partners, National Producers 30-something who recently inherited his father’s well-known artisanal time, change is coming... Maybe and Barnard College. Board of Review, Caucus Foundation, soap shop, receives a dodgy yet very confidential phone call: The President tomorrow is, indeed, a better day. Katharina Otto Bernstein, DFI, Film of the Republic, currently on a cleansing campaign to purify the country Independent). from corruption, greed and bribery, will grant him a surprise visit to buy his handmade soaps. For security reasons, the when and how cannot be disclosed, and the information must remain top secret. After Nino mistakenly leaks the exciting intel to his uncle, the entire town learns of the ever-so- Contact disruptive news, and so they embark on a maddening struggle to keep their Cyril Aris village spick and span – literally and metaphorically – for the visit of His +9613613197/ +19176644164 Excellency. [email protected] Production Grant Director’s Note Director’s Biography Director’s Biography Short Narrative To the One Who Didn’t What is death? Why do we have to Born in 1989, Wassim Geagea With offices in Beirut, Cairo, Spring Grants 2016 die? Where do we go after we die? is a Lebanese journalist, writer Casablanca, Dubai and Riyadh, The Is there life after death? Questions and filmmaker. He obtained a Talkies has been producing award- Give Me Life that left their impact on my BA in Audio-Visual Studies from winning commercials since 1988. childhood and turned my life upside the Lebanese Institute of Fine After the success of its first feature Wassim Geagea ‘Ila Alati Lam Tahibni Alhayat’ / Lebanon, Qatar / Arabic down. Through this film, I want Arts in 2011. His first short film, film, Amin Dora’s ‘Ghadi’ (2013), the Director / Screenwriter / Producer to dig deep into the psychological ‘My Grandfather’s Photo’ (2011), company created a new content Runtime: 25 min world of that boy, as an attempt won the best short film prize in department to produce feature Genre: Docufiction, Drama to get to know him better. I want Lebanon’s European Film Festival films as well as digital and television Interests: Children to accompany his psychological and was screened at the Institut series. state and all the suffering he du Monde Arabe in Paris. ‘To the When his mother unexpectedly dies, a nine-year-old boy kidnaps went through when faced with One Who Didn’t Give Me Life’ is his a statue of the Virgin Mary in order to blackmail Jesus into this ordeal. This is my challenge: second short film. returning her. building a character from scratch Gabriel Chamoun that would be a small portrait of me, Producer a character that I complete, discuss and clash with. I speak to it about itself and it speaks to me about itself. It tells me about its struggles so I bring it to life so that it will voice what I could not say myself. I want this character to cry, struggle, hurt, question… speak. It is a simple human story, telling and expressing a major event that I lived through in my childhood. It is time for me to ‘To the One Who Didn’t Give Me Life’ tells the story of Wassim, a nine-year- speak of it and to confront it. old boy born and raised in a religious Christian family in Lebanon. When his mother dies, Wassim’s father explains that Jesus needed her more than Wassim. Wassim responds by kidnapping a statue of the Virgin Mary to blackmail Jesus into returning her. Eventually, Wassim realises that his Contact mother will not return, so he makes the statue look like his mother, then The Talkies buries it. The grave becomes a shrine he visits whenever he wants to talk to Gabriel Chamoun his mother. The movie is an intimate narrative of loss, based on a true story +961 1 511 116 and complemented by real-life testimonies throughout the film. [email protected] A full list of projects funded by the Doha Film Institute is available at Contact us: www.dohafilminstitute.com/financing/projects/grants [email protected] dohafilminstitute.com @dohafilm | @dohafilmarabic .com/dohafilminstitute