A still from ‘Sudan, Remember Us’ by Hind Meddeb, courtesy of the DFI
With the theme of the 2024 edition of Ajyal Film Festival presented by the Doha Film Institute announced as ‘Moments That Matter’, the event will also see the participation of Palestinian stars Hiam Abbas, Saleh and Mohammad Bakri, along with beloved Egyptian actor Khaled El Nabawy, Turkish TV star Esra Bilgic and Sudanese musician Mustafa the Poet.
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Jeff Nichols photographed by © Kyle Kaplan, courtesy of 20th Century Fox, used with permission
Plus, the latest projects by favorite filmmakers Lina Soualem, Murad Abu Eisheh, Cherien Dabis and Tala Hadid will be featured in this year’s prestigious sessions with selected projects in development and post-production from Morocco, Africa and the Arab world.
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A still from ‘Aïcha’ by Mehdi Barsaoui, courtesy of The Party Film Sales
This year there are 12 Doha Film Institute supported films in the lineup on the Lido, plus the DFI is hosting a special afternoon and even a gala dinner celebrating their achievements in the world of cinema and art.
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A still from ‘Salted Skins’ by Nicolas Fattouh, courtesy of the DFI
It’s all in a week’s work for the Doha Film Institute, the greatest cinematic organization in the MENA region.
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Goodies at the tables welcoming guests attending the important gala included a keffiyeh print glasses holder and a mini candle for Gaza.
When the London-based foundation’s co-founder said, during her speech, that there was an “edu-cide” happening in Gaza, suddenly everything that has been going on in the past six months in Palestine came into clear focus and explained for this writer Israel’s inexplicable actions.
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‘Gokogu no Neko’ (The Cats of Gokogu Shrine) by Kazuhiro Soda
With the Competition titles still to be announced, the Berlin Film Festival is already showing some great bridge building colors, as well as panache, good taste and humor. And a film that starts out being about cats, but turns into so much more...
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The films — hailing from 11 countries with 11 helmed by women filmmakers — include the highly anticipated ‘Motherhood’ by Meryam Joobeur, Tunisian filmmaker Ala Eddine Slim’s next project, and Erige Sehiri’s follow up to her critically acclaimed ‘Under the Fig Trees’.
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Going forward, if we’re going to learn anything about the pandemics and how to handle them, it’s going to come from New Zealand. And in the film festival world, if we’re going to find a way to move forward, it will also come from this edition of the New Zealand International Film Festival, under the direction of Marten Rabarts.
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Sawsan Arsheed in a still from Soudade Kaadan's 'The Day I Lost My Shadow'
'The Day I Lost My Shadow' by Soudade Kaadan won the Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film Jury at the 75th Venice Film Festival. It's a win to be celebrated for all women filmmakers, of course, but also for Syrian filmmakers who, since the start of the war in 2011 have all but disappeared. Scattered around foreign lands, their voices and visions have become the true casualties of this conflict.
In her film, which world premiered at the festival in the Orizzonti section, Kaadan uses the metaphor of personal shadows as a way to show how the war strips people of their humanity and hope. When Sana, played by the beautiful Sawsan Arsheed, goes out looking for a gas canister so she can cook for her son, she is pulled into a three day nightmare that eventually ends the way everything ends in Syria... I'll leave that to your imagination and perhaps your first viewing of the film.
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A still from 'M' by Yolande Zauberman, with Menahem Lang on the right
As I sat for breakfast this morning with Meredith Taylor, a fellow writer, she said something that struck me, because it's so true.
"Before I started coming to Locarno, I would look at their yellow and black logo and think, it must be a chic and exclusive festival for true film lovers." I paraphrase a bit but you get the message. In fact, coming personally to the Locarno Festival for the first time last year, I too felt that they constantly and continuously impressed me with the quality of the films they select, but also the incredible devotion the festival has to the cinematic art. It's true, it is chic -- I mean just look at Meg Ryan in her white dress against that backdrop on this website's Homepage -- it is exclusive, yet totally democratic and wonderfully interactive. The only thing that is requested for you to join this club too is a love, a true passion and devotion to cinema. Wow. What's there not to love in a festival like this?!
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As of my very first steps at this year's Qumra, around the Souq Waqif, spent inside the Date Market fair and eating a bowl of fragrant Moroccan fava bean soup at a nearby restaurant, to my very last moments wandering inside the Hamad International Airport drinking an espresso with a fellow journalist, Doha gave me the very best she has to offer. And that's pretty darn sensational in a country that can count culture, fashion and heritage at the top of its list of priorities.
From the brand new, still partly in construction National Museum of Qatar rising out of the sands, and shaped like a Desert Rose, the crystallized rock that is formed when lighting hits the dunes, to the institution of the Museum of Islamic Art, where most of the Qumra events and masterclasses are held, to the leisurely, harass-free environment of the Souq itself, I felt like I was being coddled in a cocoon of culture and learning, one that would definitely remain with me for months to come.
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
A still from Rana Eid’s ‘Panoptic’
It is not often that a film journalist like me gets to experience the stuff hard core news are made of in first person, up close. I mean, I’ve been privy to some great cinematic history in the making and yes, I lived in NYC at the time of the attacks of 9/11 so I watched unmentionable horror unfolding before my very eyes, but in Locarno I feel part of another narrative that will affect the world as we know it.
I’m talking about the sudden decision by UN war crimes Special Prosecutor Carla del Ponte to quit her post, because she feels that Syria is now “a land without future”. Appointed to a three-member panel set up in August 2011 by the Human Rights Council to monitor the al-Assad regime and the unfolding civil war in Syria remotely, del Ponte represented the one slight hope for justice and yet today, that hope seems gone. Having previously sat on tribunals that investigated atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, del Ponte is most famous for putting Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević on trial at The Hague. And for having stood up to Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra and won, by simply walking away with her life. Now that’s a hero of a woman right there!
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