SANAD - Real Support for Arab Filmmakers

Arab filmmakers have always had to look for funding from the strangest places: from the ex-colonisers - the ones that were occupying their land, from their families, or from their own tired pockets. But today with funding programmes like SANAD of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, they are being given the opportunity to make cinema in better conditions and without having to compromise their visions and their own subjectivities. In its first round SANAD has been a total success and many applications were received.

The fund focuses on two stages of film production: the pre-production level, where filmmakers start going deeper into their subject, the period when trying to combine different jobs and writing doesn’t always have a happy ending, and the phase of post-production, when filmmakers have already shot their film, spent all their money and have no more contacts to call and ask favours from (and so the money comes just at the right time). This means that the fund leads not only to the production of a film, but to the production of a film with quality facilities, which actually makes a difference.

Amongst the granted projects we find directors at many different stages of their works and careers, so the list draws out an interesting map of contemporary independent Arab cinema.

From Morocco Faouzi Bensaïdi, who directed the well-known WWW (What a Wonderful World), is one of the grantees for post-production with his latest film Death for Sale. Also from Morocco and in her post-production phase is Leila Kilani, whose latest film deals with migration, and is set in the free zone of the Atlantic coast of Tangiers. It is interesting to see that SANAD has opened its doors to the reality of migrants and to Arab filmmakers of the diaspora. The programme is giving a great opportunity to the young Brahim Fritah, whose film Playground Stories is totally based in Paris, and to the new work of established Tunisian filmmaker Raja Amari, whose new film Corps Etrangers keeps exploring characters that are “carried by their desire”, like in her previous stories.

There are a couple of projects which allow us to see how some filmmakers have become the producers of the new generation. This is the case for Tariq Teguia, who has the support of Lebanese filmmaker Ghassan Salhab.

Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji has two projects supported by SANAD: the documentary In My Mother’s Arms, already in post-production (a joint project with Atia Al-Daradji) and Train Station, a fiction in development also set in contemporary Iraq.

Among the fiction filmmakers we find some promising newcomers, like Anne Marie Jacir, whose new work When I Saw You, tells the story of “the moment of hope, the particular moment in the life of an individual when the world seems to open up for him”.

Sobhi Al-Zobaidi, author of important titles in experimental Palestinian cinema, is in development of a fiction film that seems to question and examine Palestinian identity, and the way Palestinians themselves have constructed it.

Meanwhile Mohammad Malas, another grantee and probably one of the most prominent Syrian figures in cinema, is now in development of the last episode of his trilogy on contemporary Syria.

In addition, some of the most important names of Arab documentaries are supported by this first attempt of the festival: we see the latest work of the Lebanese couple formed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, whose original project Lebanese Rocket Society is also supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture.

Even Omar Amiralay has his latest film funded by SANAD, which carries the working title Seduction.

Another important name is Hala Abdallah. This Syrian filmmaker who held onto our hearts with the film I am the one who brings flowers to her tomb is now preparing a new project, entitled As if we were catching a cobra, in which she questions “arabitude” and tries to unfold what it means to be an Arab today.

There are other grantees, like Kamel El Mahouti, who presents his film My Brother on the multiple identity of a young French-Arab-Muslim; Saeed Salmeen, whose film Sun Dress takes place in between Syria and the U.A.E.; Dalia Al Kury, whose film My Jinn takes a very interesting approach to one of the more popular Arab myths: the Djins.

To sum up, right now SANAD is supporting the work of many important names in the Arab filmmaking world, and will hopefully result in a number of good films, apart from giving filmmakers great networking opportunities. We might even be witnessing the beginning of a new era, in which a full rebirth of Arab independent cinema could take place - a cinema compromised of its times and peoples, but also often personal and intimate.

By Laila Hotait Salas