Dohar Film Institute announces new grants, approximately half goes to women – Diversity

The Doha Film Institute, the leading incubator for quality Arab rentals, has announced the receipt of its spring grants for 39 projects – almost half of which are run by women.

A number of works, almost completed, are expected to begin in Venice in September and descend on the international festival circuit.

These include “Gaza My Love”, a satirical joke about the catastrophic impact of the discovery of an ancient Greek statue at the bottom of the Gaza Strip, co-directed by Palestinian twin brothers Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser, whose Gaza hairdressers made a splash in the 2015 drama “Degrad”. Has done; Khadar Ahmed, a director of Somali descent, promises “The Gravedigger” to tell the story of a Djibouti gravedigger trying to reunite his family during a feud; And about Iraqi director Shawkat Amin Korki’s “The Exam” about two sisters who cheated on college admissions exams to avoid forced marriage. Korki’s previous works include “Stone on Memory” which won multiple awards

A number of other DFI-backed works in the post now include the director of Morocco’s Adil El Fadili’s Mena, such as “My Father Doesn’t Die”, who lived in Morocco in 1955, taking on a New Year’s boy. “Lead Year”; And the doc of the late French-Moroccan director Dalila Ennadre “Jean Janet, our flower father”.

The latest batch of most Arabic projects is funded by DFI and is destined for creative upbringing, including nine works outside the Mena region. Four of them are from Colombia, Haiti, Bangladesh and Tanzania, countries that have not previously sought funding for the institute.

“We are proud to look to past and future grant recipients as part of DFI’s enduring commitment to the development of independent films, and we are delighted to see the inclusion of new countries in this cycle,” DFI chief executive Fatma Hassan Almeraihi said in a statement.

Among the nine non-Arab projects cut for DFI currency is the Kentucky-set French dock “The Last Hillbilly”, which was recently shown to buyers in the virtual ear market as part of the ACD Cannes, a parallel division that has yet to be announced this year. Official election despite the festival being canceled.
Italian video artist and filmmaker Yuri Anakarani’s “Speedboats”, which DFI reports depicts the story of an alternative society beneath the canals and palaces of the Venetian Lagoon, is in the dock-in-post grant.

DFI’s recent grant to the Spring Grant TV series in the state has confirmed that Jordanian director Ahmed Samara mounted the Arabic skin with the help of psychological funds to compose “Strange Stories from Strange Territories”. According to the press material, the project of the animated series “contains eight stories drawn from various ancient historical stories and myths spread in different Arab worlds.

(Image: “Strange story from a strange country”)