News

Pan-Arab distributor Mad Solutions has picked up international rights to Tunisian auteur Ala Eddine Slim’s mystery drama “Agora” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Locarno Film Festival.

The film revolves around three missing people who suddenly return to a remote town in Tunisia, prompting tensions within their families and community. A local police inspector named Fathi tries to unravel the mystery of their initial disappearance and unexpected return with the help of her friend Amine. Then, a second inspector arrives from the capital. The somewhat supernatural film’s events unfold as if they were taking place in the dreams of two animals – a blue dog and a black crow – as the director has put it in an interview with Variety.

Slim’s two previous works, both featuring minimal dialogue and atmospheric images, garnered significant critical acclaim: “The Last of Us” (2016) won the Lion of the Future Prize at Venice.

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will debut 17 world premieres, including new works by Hong Sang-soo and Wang Bing, as part of its 2024 competition program. This year’s event runs from August 7 – 17.

The festival announced its competition lineups this morning. The Hong Sang-soo feature is titled Suyoocheon (By The Stream) and stars Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee. The Wang Bing feature is a France, Luxembourg, and Netherlands co-production titled Hard Times. Scroll down to see the full Locarno competition lineup, which also includes new titles from Ben Rivers, Mar Coll, and Christoph Hochhäusler.

The festival today also announced that French acting veterans Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet will receive the event’s honorary Excellence Award Davide Campari at the opening ceremony on August 7. Previous recipients of the award include Riz Ahmed and Aaron Taylor Johnson.

Locarno’s separate Piazza Grande lineup features 18 titles, including Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig,...

“If you’d taken those pills, this wouldn’t have happened. Now it’s my daughter who’s on medication,” says his mother-in-law.

Rafik (Majd Mastoura) has just been released from prison after serving a four year sentence. We glimpse the cause of it briefly at the start: the abrupt episode of violence in which he smashed up his workplace, terrifying his colleagues. We also see an incident in the prison where he climbed up high and leapt from a fourth story window. There are scars on his face. Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua) is at school, his mother-in-law tells him. He’s doing well there. As for Yosr (Rania Agrebi), she doesn’t love him anymore – but Rafik has a plan. He will take both of them away, behind the mountains. He has something he needs to show them, and then they will understand.

In his way, Rafik has all the...

The Arab Cinema Center has published this year's “Golden 101”, its annual list of the 101 most influential figures in Arab cinema in its 22nd edition of Arab Cinema Magazine, which is being circulated at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival and can be accessed on the Marché du Film website.

Celebrating individuals and institutions who have made the most significant impact on the Arab film industry over the past twelve months, this year's Golden 101 comprises of 13 directors, 16 producers, 14 actors, five crew members, 18 distributors from 12 institutions, 12 executives from 10 governmental cinema institutions, 11 executives from seven video-on-demand platforms, 11 representatives from seven festivals, and seven executives from film financing institutions.

Commenting on this year's Golden 101 list, Colin Brown, Mad Solutions' Managing Partner for International Operations said; “These are the artists, artisans, and power brokers who have distinguished themselves this past year – and the rest of the world should pay attention to them if...

Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters lead the nominations for the 8th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will be held during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

Both features picked up seven nominations apiece for the awards, focused on Arab films that were produced and premiered outside of the Arab world in 2023. Overseen and run by the Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc), it was voted on by 209 critics from 72 countries and the winners will be announced during Cannes on May 18.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

This year’s nominees range from Sudan,...

Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters and Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Lupita Nyong’o-EPed drama Goodbye Julia lead the nominations in the eighth edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.

Hybrid work Four Daughters, exploring the story of a real-life Tunisian mother who lost two of her daughters to Isis after they were radicalized by a local preacher, world premiered in Competition in Cannes last year.

The film won Cannes’ Golden Eye for Best Documentary and also went on to be nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia was also at Cannes in 2023, making history as the first Sudanese film to play in the festival across its 76 editions, with a debut in Un Certain Regard. It represented Sudan at in the 2023-24 Oscar race but was not nominated.

Set against the backdrop of the 2011 South Sudan Independence referendum,...

Four Daughters (Les Filles d'Olfa) director Kaouther Ben Hania on Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui, Ichrak Matar, Nour Karoui, and Hind Sabri: “I already have a rich gallery of female characters. So to simplify and have the focus on the female characters, I thought that the men can be played by one actor (Majd Mastoura) and I wanted to experiment with this idea.”

In the second instalment with Kaouther Ben Hania on Tunisia’s now Best International Feature Film and Documentary Oscar shortlisted Four Daughters (Les Filles d'Olfa) we discussed her three natural-born storytellers (Olfa Hamrouni and her daughters Eya Chikhaoui and Tayssir Chikhaoui), experimenting with one actor (Majd Mastoura) portraying multiple male characters, loving clichés, and colours. Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin had received a Best International Film Oscar nomination in 2021 and her intense and unwavering Beauty And The Dogs (Aala Kaf Ifrit...

Mad Celebrity — the talent management subsidiary of the pan-Arab film and TV company Mad Solutions — has signed Tunisian actor and writer Majd Mastoura, French Lebanese actor Isabelle Zighondi, and Saudi actor, producer and director Amawri Ezayah to the roster of its Mad Rising Celebrity unit, and visual artist, producer and Dop Mostafa El Kashef, who will be joining Mad Crew Celebrity.

Mastoura is best known for his work on Mohamed Ben Attia’s “Hedi” — for which he received a Silver Bear for best actor from the Berlin Film Festival, making him the first-ever Arab actor to receive the award — and Léonor Serraille’s “Mother and Son,” which world premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

His most recent project is Ben Attia’s surreal Tunisian drama feature “Behind the Mountains,” which world premiered in the Horizons Section of this year’s Venice Film Festival and is holding its Arab...

Mohamed Ben Attia’s third feature played at Red Sea International Film Festival last week.

Kinovista has acquired French distribution rights to Mohamed Ben Attia’s Behind The Mountains.

Kinovista acquired the film from Paris-based sales agent Luxbox. The film had its Arab premiere at Red Sea on Friday, December 1, having debuted in Horizons at Venice in September, and gone on to play BFI London Film Festival and Thessaloniki.

Behind The Mountains is Ben Attia’s third feature, after 2016’s Heidi and 2018’s Dear Son. The fantasy-thriller tells the story of Rafik [Majd Mastoura], a Tunisian father and husband with mental health issues,...

Catatonic with a bright red swollen eye, middle-aged Rafik (Majd Mastoura) sits handcuffed inside a police station in the aftermath of a violent outburst at his soul-crushing office job. Whatever gripe eroded his sanity doesn’t matter as much now, since the incident, including a suicide attempt, unearthed a supernatural ability he possesses. An unpredictable oddity of a film, “Behind the Mountains” sees seasoned Tunisian writer-director Mohamed Ben Attia step away from the straightforward social realist drama of his previous festival standouts “Dear Son” and “Hedi,” while staying steadfast in his interest for emotionally intricate protagonists and the complications of parent-child relationships.

Four years after the breakdown that landed him in prison, Rafik kidnaps his son Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua), an impressionable grade-school kid who barely remembers his father, and drives away from the capital and into the open spaces of the mountainous countryside. In brief exchanges, we learn of Rafik...

Inserting yourself into the story you’re telling is always a risk. Kaouther Ben Hania, the director of Four Daughters, makes herself known in her docu-fiction experiment, seen coaching to some extent her subjects. The film moving between the rooms of their family home and a backstage setting with makeup being applied (perhaps admitting to the surprisingly glossy look of much of the film), it readily anticipates criticism of itself for exploitation. Though lining a couch for much of the runtime, our five subjects are very comfortable in front of the camera, and you kind of just trust them.

Sharing a title with Curtiz but not shaming it, in Armond terms, Four Daughters is definitely an admirable, if uneven experiment. A teary tone is set from near the beginning and it’s hard not to be at least a little moved; two of the four daughters in this family have...

Absence is at the heart of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s cleverly constructed and sneakily powerful fiction-documentary hybrid Four Daughters. In the opening images, we see a woman, Olfa, and her two daughters, Eya and Tayssir. Before we can even wonder where the other two daughters implied in the title might be, Hania informs us via voice over that the two eldest, Rahma and Ghofrane, were “devoured by the wolf.”

The meaning of that phrase isn’t revealed until the third act of Ben Hania’s film. But before we get there, Hania tells the story of how and why those two daughters were compelled to abruptly leave home—fracturing a family that, now eight years later, is still recovering—by employing two actors, Nour Karoui and Ichrak Matar, to play Rahma and Ghofrane, respectively, and another, Majd Mastoura, to play various male figures. And in certain scenes that are especially harrowing,...

Nightclub-set drama premiered in the Berlinale Panorama earlier this year.

France’s Potemkine Films has picked up Anthony Lapia’s Berlinale Panorama title After from the France and US-based outfit Scriptofilm.

Potemkine is planning a 2024 theatrical release for the drama that opens in a Paris techno club and follows a young lawyer who meets an Uber driver on the dance floor and takes him back to her apartment as their very different lives and views collide as day approaches.

“We bought this film for its raw, radical energy,” said Potemkine’s CEO Nils Bouaziz.” It’s one of the few...

Nightclub-set drama sells to France, Spain, Brazil and Ukraine.

Anthony Lapia’s debut feature After, that world premiered in Berlin’s Panorama, has been sold to Potemkine Films in France who are planning a theatrical release in the first semester of 2024.

The After party will continue with Filmin in Spain, Pandora/Gardia Distribuidora in Brazil and KyivMusicFilm in Ukraine.

Scriptofilm is handling international sales for

the French nightclub-set drama, which kicks off in a Parisian techno club then follows a young lawyer who meets an Uber driver on the dance floor before bringing him back to her apartment as their...

Move over, Richard Donner.

In “Behind the Mountains,” premiering in Venice’s Horizons section, Mohamed Ben Attia makes sure “you’ll believe a man can fly” once again. Although it might not be as graceful.

“I didn’t want him to be like a superhero or fly like Superman. He is floating, struggling with gravity,” he says about his protagonist Rafik, who gives up his entire life – and even ends up in jail – chasing an impossible dream. But there is one place where dreams come to life and he wants his son to experience it too.

The Tunisian director, also behind “Hedi” and “Dear Son,” was hesitant to play with supernatural elements at first.

“I don’t have any technical background. I am not technical at all! But I’ve become obsessed with this man, who extracts himself from his community in such a radical way. I kept seeing an...

"You saw me fly, Yassine, right?" Luxbox has revealed a festival promo trailer for a film titled Behind the Mountains from Tunisia, which is premiering at the 2023 Venice Film Festival currently underway in Italy. This looks like one of the most exciting discoveries of the festival, though not many people are paying attention to it yet - maybe this trailer will help build some buzz. The vague description says – the film is about a man who violently breaks free from his banal environment, evading society with its principles, codes and institutions. Majd Mastoura stars as Rafik. "It's the story of a man who violently breaks free from his banal environment, subtracting himself from society with its principles, codes, and institutions." He takes his son to show him something incredible. Also starring Walid Bouchhioua, Samer Bisharat, Selma Zghidi, and Helmi Dridi. This trailer gives a big hint that it's the ability...

Tunisian auteur Mohamed Ben Attia’s new work “Behind the Mountains,” which will soon launch from the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section, sees the director add a supernatural element to the social dramas for which he is known.

Attia’s third feature reunites the director with Majd Mastoura, star of his breakout drama “Hedi” — about a repressed young man ignited by a free-spirited woman — which won best debut and actor honors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival.

In “Mountains,” Mastoura plays a man named Rafeek who, after spending four years in jail, takes his only son to the Atlas Alps in the Northwest of Tunisia to prove to him that he can fly.

“The idea goes back to my high school years” said Ben Attia of the film. “It was just a picture I had in my mind; the picture of a man who is running until, little by little,...

It’s easy to get trapped in circuitous arguments surrounding documentary ethics at the best of times, but Kaouther Ben Hania’s metafictional “Four Daughters” — involving young children, abuse, trauma and re-enactments — appears to chart these knotty waters as a barefaced challenge. This Tunisian entry into Cannes’ Official Competition is a bold behemoth of an undertaking, which is veiled, unveiled and then re-veiled with endless angles and perspectives; it’s a veritable snakepit of uneasy decisions that grips you with its novel approach to so-called truth-telling before lapsing into something a little more conventional. Far from a gamble made in the service of naturalism, this heightened and strange piece of fiction re-enactment exposes itself for critique in a way that you almost have to respect. For its sins, it seems to —just about— succeed.

“Four Daughters” orbits the trauma of a Tunisian woman named Olfa and her youngest daughters, Tayssir and Eya.

Actors and real people re-enact the past to understand why two daughters left Tunisia to fight for Is in Syria, leaving the rest of the family behind

There is real emotional warmth and human sympathy in this otherwise somewhat flawed film, a docudrama experiment in getting actors to play some of the real people in a tragic news story from Tunisia. Olfa Hamrouni, a divorced woman from the coastal town of Sousse, made the headlines seven years ago when two of her four daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane, broke her and their sisters’ hearts by vanishing from the country to become fighters and wives for Islamic State in Syria. Now director Kaouther Ben Hania re-enacts key parts of Olfa’s family life, featuring the remaining sisters Eya and Tayssir playing themselves, but performers playing the vanished fugitives: Ichraq Matar is Ghofrane and Nour Karoui is Rahma.

Despite the fact that she hasn’t vanished,...

Kaouther Ben Hania’s heartbreaking Four Daughters (Les filles d’Olfa) pulls you in with a question: Who is Olfa Hamrouni?

She rose to international fame in 2016 when she criticized the Tunisian government for not preventing her daughters from joining the Islamic State in Libya. In interviews from those years, Hamrouni is a bereaved mother. Her voice aches with pain as she recounts the loss of her two eldest daughters, and it shakes with anger when she speaks of the government’s listless response.

The Olfa of Ben Hania’s docu-fiction strikes a more relaxed pose. She has traded her pink hijabs for a black scarf, tightly woven around her head. She’s freer with her laughs and more pointed with her asides. Grief still undergirds her anecdotes, but so does a palpable willingness to share. She eagerly explains how she believes a movie about her life will help spread an...

Late on in Kaouther Ben Hania’s compelling, ambitious hybrid “Four Daughters,” Olfa Hamrouni — the film’s focus, its fixation and its most charismatically contradictory character — strokes a purring, heavily pregnant ginger cat. Sometimes, she tells us, a cat will be so scared for her babies that she eats them. It’s Olfa’s covert acknowledgement that her own misguided protective urge, forged by her hard history with men and mother alike, might have contributed to her life’s great, rupturing tragedy: when, in 2015, the elder two of her four girls ran away to join Isis. But it also recalls one of her earlier to-camera segments, when she described her daughters, as though shielding herself from the pain of the real with the language of fable, as having been “devoured by the wolf.” So which is it: Were Ghofran and Rahma, 16 and 15 at the time of their disappearance, eaten up...

Paris-based sales agent to launch film at Cannes market.

Paris-based Luxbox has boarded Ali Ahmadzadeh’s Iranian-German co-production Critical Zone, set in the underworld of Tehran, and will kick off sales at the upcoming Cannes market.

The Persian-language feature follows a man driving through Tehran’s underworld with his dog, dealing drugs and healing troubled souls.

Ahmadzadeh produces alongside Sina Ataeian Dena in co-production with Germany’s Counterintuitive film.

Ahmadzadeh made his feature debut in 2013 with Kami’s Party, followed by Atomic Heart that premiered in Berlin in 2014 and 2017’s Phenomenon (Padideh).

The filmmaker was arrested in Tehran last year...

This French debut feature follows two people who meet at a Parisian techno nightclub

Screen can reveal the trailer for Anthony Lapia’s After, set to world premiere in Berlin’s Panorama section.

This French debut feature follows two people who meet at a Parisian techno nightclub before going home together as their different lives and views collide as day approaches. Director Lapia also wrote and produced with his company Société Acéphale alongside Salt For Sugar Films.

The journey to the Berlinale official selection has been a Cinderella story of sorts for the completely independent collaborative effort five years in the making.

Sepideh Farsi’s “La Sirène” (“The Siren”) is opening the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand.

The program, which comprises 35 films from 30 countries, including 28 world premieres and 11 debuts, includes new films by Patric Chiha, İlker Çatak, Frauke Finsterwalder, Maite Alberdi, Milad Alami and Apolline Traoré. They feature a galaxy of well-known protagonists and actors such as Joan Baez, Jafar Panahi, Payman Maadi, George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Fan Bingbing, Sandra Hüller and Susanne Wolff.

Panorama Selections

“After”

by Anthony Lapia | with Louise Chevillotte, Majd Mastoura, Natalia Wiszniewska

France

World premiere | Debut film

“All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White”

by Babatunde Apalowo | with Tope Tedela, Riyo David, Martha Ehinome Orhiere, Uchechika Elumelu, Floyd Anekwe

Nigeria

World premiere | Debut film

“And, Towards Happy Alleys”

by Sreemoyee Singh | with Jafar Panahi, Nasrin Soutodeh, Jinous Nazokkar, Farhad Kheradmand, Aida Mohammadkhani

India

World premiere | Debut film | Documentary

“La Bête dans la...

London-set revenge thriller Femme, starring George MacKay and Candyman actor Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, has been selected for the Berlinale’s Panorama strand.

It was among a raft of fresh additions to the festival’s Panorama, Generation and Berlinale Special strands announced on Wednesday.

The picture is co-directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping and is based on their 2021 BAFTA-nominated short film of the same name.

Stewart-Jarrett plays a drag queen whose life is destroyed by a homophobic attack and then plots revenge on one of the perpetrators (MacKay) when he spots him in a gay sauna.

The 21 new Panorama titles also include France-based Austrian director Patric Chiha’s The Beast In The Jungle.

A contemporary adaptation of Henry James’s 1903 novella of the same name, the drama follows a man and woman who frequent a huge nightclub for 25 years in anticipation of a mysterious event.

The cast features Anaïs Demoustier,...

Paris-based sales company Luxbox, which handled sales on the Martin Scorsese-backed “A Ciambra” and Berlinale hit “The Heiresses,” is driving into production, partnering with Dominga Sotomayor’s Chile-based Cinestación on “Penal Cordillera.”

Focusing on edgy or adventurous titles often with a high-profile festival presence, Luxbox will also handle world sales on “Penal Cordillera,” the feature debut of Chilean playwright-director Felipe Carmona.

Written by Carmona, with script consultancy from Alejandro Fadel, whose “Muere, Monstruo, Muere” plays Cannes’ Un Certain Regard this year, “Penal Cordillera” is based on a true story. It turns on the last stand made by five army generals of the Augusto Pinochet regime, the dictator’s most murderous torturers whose sentences for human rights violation totalled over 800 years in prison, to avoid at any cost their transfer from a luxury prison in the Andes foothills.

“Penal Cordillera” tips into horror as the former-torturers’ decision to fight oblivion...

Two new film festivals in the Arab world — and not in the Gulf States region where Kuwait had its first festival last month — have announced their first editions. Jordan and Egypt, along with the first ever Arab Critics Awards casts a new light onto just what Arab cinema is.

What began several years ago in the recently oil-rich Gulf nations of Dubai, Abu-Dhabi and Qatar who first brought the notion of Arab cinema to the western world with expensive receptions (including a camel one year at the Toronto Film Festival) and ultra fancy festivals (Abu Dhabi has since bowed out of its Tribeca Ff partnership and pulled back on all but its film fund) has now come to a more balanced sharing of Arabic cinema as a multi-culturally wealthy medium.

With the growth of Cairo-based Mad Solutions which started as a public relations agency for Arab-content cinema and expanded into...

Cannes Ends with…Awards — 3rd of 3

The heightened security with machine gun armed soldiers and policemen constantly patrolling was intensified after the Manchester Massacre. With a pall over the festival, one minute of silence was observed for the 22 murdered and flags hung at half-mast. In addition to that, the sudden death at 57 of the Busan Film Festival deputy director Kim Ji-seok and that of the James Bond star Roger Moore brought the film world into a new perspective as we join the larger world to face the random indications of human mortality. High security vs. cinema as a sanctuary of freedom is highlighted this year like no other time that I can recall in my 31 years here.President of the jury, Pedro Almodovar

But life does go on, the jury judges, the stars get press attention on the red carpet and the rest of us continue to wait patiently in...

Exclusive: Egyptian revolution dramas loom large in first edition of awards.

Egyptian director Mohamed Diab has won best director and best screenplay for his revolution drama Clash [pictured], which opened Un Certain Regard last year, in the first edition of the Arab Critics’ Awards.

The film-maker, who is back in Cannes this year as a member of the Un Certain Regard jury, will receive the award at a special ceremony at Cannes Film Festival today (May 21).

The prize for best film went to Tamer El Said’s In the Last Days Of The City, which captures Cairo in the lead-up to the revolution through a film-maker receiving footage from friends based in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin.

Best actor went to Tunisia’s Majd Mastoura for his performance in Tunisian revolution allegory Hedi and best actress went to Heba Ali for Withered Green.

Overseen by the Arab Cinema Center (Acc), the Arab Critics’ Awards involves 24 jury members from 15 countries...

Exclusive: Egyptian revolution dramas loom large in first edition of awards.

Egyptian director Mohamed Diab has won best director and best screenplay for his revolution drama Clash [pictured], which opened Un Certain Regard last year, in the first edition of the Arab Critics’ Awards.

The film-maker, who is back in Cannes this year as a member of the Un Certain Regard jury, will receive the award at a special ceremony at Cannes Film Festival today (May 21).

The prize for best film went to Tamer El Said’s In the Last Days Of The City, which captures Cairo in the lead-up to the revolution through a film-maker receiving footage from friends based in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin.

Best actor went to Tunisia’s Majd Mastoura for his performance in Tunisian revolution allegory Hedi and best actress went to Heba Ali for Withered Green.

Overseen by the Arab Cinema Center (Acc), the Arab Critics’ Awards involves 24 jury members from 15 countries...

Winners of new initiative launched by Arab Cinema Center (Acc) to be announced during Cannes.Scroll Down For The Full Line-up

Mohamed Diab’s Egyptian Revolution drama Clash (pictured) which opened Cannes’ Un Certain Regard last year, Withered Green and Hedi lead the nominations in the inaugural edition of new Critics’ Awards aimed at Arab cinema.

Clash and Withered Green, which premiered at Locarno last summer and went on to win best director for Egyptian film-maker Mohammed Hammad at Dubai International Film Festival in December, picked up three nominations each.

Tunisian director Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi, the metaphorical tale of a young man who rebels against a predestined path set by his family, has been nominated in two categories, including best actor for star Majd Mastoura, who was feted for his performance at the Berlinale in 2016.

The winners will be announced during Cannes on Sunday May 21.

The initiative overseen by Cairo-based promotional body the Arab Cinema...

The Arab Cinema Center is launching the Critics Awards to promote and support Arab cinema internationally. The winners will be for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Actor.

The 26 member jury includes prominent Arab and foreign critics from 15 countries from around the world. Egyptian film critic Ahmed Shawky is serving as manager of the Critics Awards.

Film analyst Alaa Karkouti, CEO of Mad Solutions, the company in charge of organizing the Arab Cinema Center’s events and also the first Pan Arab independent distributor and PR company of Arabic content to and from the Arab world, said: “The Critics Awards marks a first-time initiative that encompasses film critics from all over the world dedicated to Arab films within the strategy of Arab Cinema Center to add initiatives and events to every large-scale international film festival around the world.”

He added: “This is the first new addition...

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Diego Luna amongst those to join jury president Paul Verhoeven.

The 67th Berlin Film Festival has revealed its jury, homage subject and Golden Camera recipients.

Joining jury president, Paul Verhoeven, will be actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, Diego Luna, and Julia Jentsch, producer Dora Bouchoucha Fourati, artist Olafur Eliasson and director-screenwriter Wang Quan’an.

Eighteen films are vying in this year’s competition for the Golden Bear. The winners will be announced at the Berlinale Palast on February 18.

Robocop director Verhoeven is currently flying high off the success of Golden Globe-winning drama Elle.

Gyllenhaal is best known for her Oscar-nominated role in Crazy Heart, breakthrough performances in Donnie Darko and Secretary, The Dark Knight and TV series The Honourable Woman, for which she garnered a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination.

Luna, co-star of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, has played at the Berlinale in titles including Milk (dir: Gus van Sant, Berlinale...

Hedi won best film, while Matt Johnson won best director for Operation Avalanche.

The Tunisian-French-Belgian co-production Hedi by Mohamed Ben Attia has won the best film award, the Golden Athena, at the 22nd Athens International Film Festival (September 22-October 2).

The film was co-produced by Tanit Films, Nomadis Images and the Dardenne brothers production outlet Les Films du Fleuve.

Majd Mastoura stars in the lead role as a young man who tries to break loose from his dominant mother and some of Tunisia’s more conservative social norms.

The film debuted at Berlin Film Festival 2016, winning the best first film award and a best actor prize for Mastoura.

The Aiff awards were decided by a five-member international jury presided over by the BFI programmes curator Nicola Gallani. The jury included German film critic Julia Teichmann (Film Dienst), French producer Sylvia Perel and her compatriot film critic Bernard Nave (Jeune Cinema).

Matt Johnson won the best director trophy for [link...

Edge Entertainment will release Mohamed Ben Attia’s Silver Bear-winning drama in early 2017.

Sweden-based distributor Edge Entertainment has taken Mohamed Ben Attia’s Silver Bear-winning drama Hedi for Scandinavia, Iceland and the Baltics.

Premiering in competition at the Berlinale, the film took home Silver Bears for Best First Feature and Best Actor for star Majd Mastoura.

Hedi tells the story of a young Tunisian man facing a wedding arranged by his mother.

Screen’s review praised the film’s “compassionate naturalism”, calling it “an allegory for contemporary Tunisia”.

Revered French directing duo the Dardennes brothers were onboard as co-producers.

New Paris-based sales outfit Luxbox is handling the film’s international sales, previously closing deals with Bac Films for France and Arthaus for Norway.

The film will receive a theatrical release in early 2017.

This year we are seeing many films from Mena, that is an acronym for the Middle East and North Africa. More commonly called “Arab” cinema, (though the term is inaccurate because several countries in the region are not actually “Arab”) the films of this region are winning many awards and garnering much interest worldwide.

More than 10 Arab films participated in the Berlinale’s Forum and Forum Expanded programs this year, in addition to the ones which participated in the Official Competition (“Inhebek Hedi”/ “Hedi” from Tunisia and “A Dragon Arrives!” by Mani Haghighi from Iran). This makes an especially remarkable year for Arab cinema’s presence in Berlin.

The Forum focus on Arab cinema, represented with films from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia highlights mostly young directors whose works explore both the past and present of their homelands.

The films included: “A Magical Substance Flows into Me” by artist Jumana Manna (Palestine), “Akher ayam el madina”/ “In the Last Days of the City” (Egypt) by Tamer El Said (international sales by Still Moving), documentary “Makhdoumin”/ “A Maid for Each” (Lebanon) by Maher Abi Samra (Isa: Docs & Film), “Barakah yoqabil Barakah”/ “Barakah Meets Barakah” (Saudi Arabia) by Mahmoud Sabbagh and Manazil (Isa: Mpm), “Bela abwab”/ “Houses without Doors” by Syrian-Armenian director Avo Kaprealian. Of course the 46th Berlinale Forum also screens films from European, Latin American and Asian directors.

The Tunisian film in Competition “Inhebek Hedi”/ “Hedi” by Mohamed Ben Attia, won the Best First Feature Award and its leading man, Majd Mastoura, received the prestigious Silver Bear for Best Actor for his role as Hedi. Attia’s debut feature film is a thoughtful love story about identity and independence in Tunisian society. It is being sold internationally by Luxbox.

Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel won the Silver Bear Jury Prize for Short Film for “ A Man Returned”, a 30-minute portrayal of a young refugee struggling to make a life for himself in Lebanon’s Ain El-Helweh camp, being sold internationally by 3.14 Collectif. He previously made an award-winning documentary about his own experience as a refugee. The short film was also selected as the Berlin Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards.

The Ecumenical Jury awarded the Forum Prize to Saudi filmmaker Mahmoud Sabbagh for his well-received romantic comedy “Barakah Yoqabil Barakah”/ “Barakah Meets Barakah”, a social commentary on the lives of young people in Saudi Arabia. It shared the prize with Danish production “Les Sauteurs”/ “Those Who Jump” – a film that also highlights the plight of Europe-bound refugees.

Egyptian filmmaker Tamer El-Said’s feature film “Akher Ayam El-Madina”/ “In the Last Days of the City” won the Caligari Film Prize. The film looks at a young filmmaker’s struggle to complete a film about Cairo. It was the only Egyptian film to participate in the 2016 Berlinale Forum.

Lebanese filmmaker Maher Abi Samra’s documentary “Makhdoumin”/ “A Maid for Each”, a look at the legal system that controls the lives of Lebanon’s foreign domestic workers, won the Peace Film Prize.

“Zinzana”/ “Rattle the Cage” director, Majid al Ansari, from the Arab Emirates, was honored with Variety’s Mid-East Filmmaker of the Year Award at the Berlinale. The film is the first genre movie of its kind produced in the UAE. It was financed and produced by Abu Dhabi’s ImageNation. It is repped for Us by Cinetic and international sales are by Im Global.

Projects “Mawlana”, based on Ibrahim Issa’s best-selling novel and shortlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize and director’s Mohamed Yassein’s “Wedding Song” based on Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature were being promoted at the Arab Cinema Center at the Market. Reflecting a decadent Egypt from the 1970s, “Wedding Song” is one of the largest TV productions in the Arab World in 2016.

“Theeb”, a Jordanian Epic about Bedouins, is the Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It played in Venice. International sales agent Fortissimo has licensed it to Film Movement for U.S., ABC for Benelux, New Wave for U.K., As Fidalgo for Norway, Jiff for Australia, trigon-film for Switzerland. Mad Solutions is handling the Middle East. “Ave Maria” a 14-minute Palestine satirical short is the Academy Award nomination for Best Short Fiction and is being sold internationally by Ouat Media. “ The Idol” (Palestine) played Tiff 2015 and other top fests and has sold widely throughout the world through Canada-based international sales agent Seville. Not since Elia Suleiman won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for “Divine Intervention” has a Palestinian film director made as much of an impact as “The Idol” director Hany Abu-Assad whose “Paradise Now” and “Omar” both went to the Academy Awards.

Kudos for much of the success of Arab cinema go to Mad Solutions, the Cairo, Abu Dhabi and New York based marketing and distribution company for its marketing and social media strategies as well as its release of “Theeb”, “Zinzana” and “Ave Maria”. It also helped create the Arab Cinema Center which was launched last year at the Berlinale and Efm.

In all, 20 Mena films played in the Festival and Market this year.

And what of that other small country in the region called Israel (and/ or Palestine) which is not included in the term Mena? While Israeli films that showed in Berlin received international praise, they will never show in any of the Arab countries and are sometimes boycotted by international film festivals who succumb to censorship tactics.

Most of the larger Israeli features go to Cannes, Venice and Toronto; “Afterthought” went to Cannes, “Mountain” to Venice, “Barash” to San Sebastian”, “Wedding Doll” to London and “A.K.A. Nadia” to Talinn Black Nights Film Festival. In Berlin many are screened as German Premieres.

What Israeli films have won acclaim lately? Is it possible that our hero, Katriel Schory, head of the Israel Film Fund, whose stand for true art has earned him Israeli government censure at home (A prophet is never honored in his own land) and fame abroad with new countries striving to create national cinema, is being eclipsed by the growth of “Arab” cinema?

“Sandstorm” directed by Elite Zexer (international sales by Beta) made its way to Panorama from its world premiere in Sundance where it won the Best Actress Award for Palestinian actress Lamis Ammar’s portrayal of a young Bedouin woman forced to choose between modern freedom or traditional societal strictures within an arranged marriage.

Panorama also screened “Junction 48” (international sales by The Match Factory) which received international praise and audience acclaim. The Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop movie by Israeli-American filmmaker, Udi Aloni, was supported by the Israel-based Rabinovich Foundation. The story is about Kareem who lives in a mixed Jewish-Arab crime-ridden ghetto outside Tel Aviv. He deals drugs and lives dangerously until he discovers hip-hop and decides to express his life as a Palestinian youth along with young singer Manar. Palestinian and Israeli musicians drive this music movie and for Aloni, just seeing the film made, and then shown at the Berlin Film Festival proves its success.

“Suddenly a group of people just choose to make a film and the film is extremely professional. It’s very important that this bi-national energy can create high quality stuff, the high quality is almost the symbol of the resistance. We should not even have to tell the story about the issue. The fact that we could create it is amazing,” Aloni told Euronews.

Thirty-seven-year-old Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar plays the lead role, and has known the 56-year-old Aloni for some time. “We have been on the same demonstrations, in the parties since 2000, so we live in each other’s world. He has been to my concerts many times, he directed a video clip, I was in his movies as a producer a few times. It’s not about an old generation and new generation, it’s just about creating the right generation,” he said. “He has that gift of being a good story teller and director but he gives us the stage, no, he doesn’t give us a stage, we are building a stage together… he has his own perspective but we are all on the same level,” said actress Samar Qupty. The struggle for equal rights for Palestinians or Arab Israelis inside Israel is at its crux.

Panorama Documents screened “Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?” directed by Tomer Haymann and Barak Heymann co-directed by Alexander Bodin Saphir and being sold by Austria’s Autlook. Forum showed “ Inertia” by Idan Haguel being sold by Oration Films’ Timothy O’Brian of the U.S., and “Between Fences” by Avi Mograbi, being sold by Docs & Film’s Daniela Elstner of France. Culinary Cinema showed “Café Nagler” by Mor Kaplansky and Yariv Barel is being sold internationally by Go2Films.

Teddy 30 (the retrospective of Teddy Award winners over the past 30 years) honored Dan Wolman’s 1979 film “Hide and Seek”/ “Machboim”. Berlinale Shorts screened Rotem Murat’s “Winds Junction” from Sapir College which also holds international rights; Generation 14 Plus screened “Mushkie” by Aleeza Chanowitz from the Jerusalem San Spiegel Film School, being sold by Cinephil. Seven other films were sold in the market by various sales agents.

One of the very special events I attended at the Berlinale this year was the Shabbat Dinner, held the first Friday in the Festival and hosted by Nicola Galliner, Founder and Force of the Berlin Jewish Film Festival. There was a table full of Jews: the new Director of the Jerusalem Film Festival, Noa Regev, PhD; Jay Rosenblatt, Program Director of San Francisco’sJewish Film Institute and its former Director, Peter Stein, now the Senior Programmer of Frameline, San Francisco’s Lgbtq Film Festival; Judy Ironside, the Founder and President of UK Jewish Film and of the sixth edition of the Geneva and Zurich Jewish Film Festivals, the new young director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, Ariana Cohen-Halberstam who recently moved from the New York Jcc to Boston, the prolific Israeli director, filmmaker Dan Wolman whose new film will soon be out and whose 1979 film “Hide and Seek”/ “Machboim” was part of the Teddy 30th Anniversary Retrospective held by the Berlinale Panorama.

Talk was about films, about politics including gender politics, about our concerns, (we Jews are better worriers than warriors) and just plain gossip.

Now if my readers will excuse my interjecting myself into this article:

It is my opinion that the region of the world called the Middle East, and the three major monotheistic religions of the world whose origin is there had better learn to do more than merely co-exist peacefully if we are to see peaceful and fruitful consequences which will set the world back upon its proper axis.

Art breaks down borders; it is subversive rather than observant of the exigencies of ever changing governments. It creates new perspectives and breaks down old ways of seeing. What I call “Cinema” is Art. Other movies may simply entertain and not aspire to more or they may propagate dogmas, but Art serves no master; it is not tethered; it is freedom of expression which should be honored with freedom to travel.

The Berlin International Film Festival has wrapped up for another year with the big awards handed out last night. Meryl Streep led this year's jury which handed over the top award of the Golden Bear to Gianfranco Rosi's refugee documentary "Fire At Sea".

That film explores the journey undertaken by immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia as they risk their lives to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa - with ultimately the hope of making it to mainland Europe. It beat out the likes of Jeff Nichols' "Midnight Special," Vincent Perez's "Alone in Berlin," and Michael Grandage's "Genius".

The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize went to Danis Tanovic's Bosnian drama "Death in Sarajevo" which follows a staff and guests of a hotel hosting an international diplomatic delegation. The Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize went to Lav Diaz's eight-hour Filipino drama film "A...

Fuocoammare

Italian documentary Fuocoammare (Fire At Sea) has won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale. The film follows the struggle of refugees trying to reach safety on the island of Lampedusa. Director Gianfranco Rosi, who hails from Eritrea like many of the refugees themselves, said his deepest concern was for those who never made it across the sea.

The Silver Bear award went to Mia Hansen-Løve for L'Avenir, which is also showing at the Glasgow Film Festival. The prize for best Actor went to Majd Mastoura for Inhebbek Hedi, a Tunisian tale set in the aftermath of the Arab Spring demonstrations, while Best Actress went to Trine Dyrholm for Thomas Vinterberg's Kollektivet, a drama about life in a 1970s Danish commune.

The winners were selected by the International Jury, headed by Meryl Streep....

Gianfranco Rosi’s migrant documentary Fire At Sea (Fuocoammare) took home the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, which handed out its competition awards on Saturday night.Click here for full list of winners

Italian-American Rosi - who won the Golden Lion in Venice for his documentary Sacro Gra in 2013 - spent months on the island of Lampedusa capturing the everyday lives of its 6,000-strong population.

Situated closer to Africa than Europe, the Italian island of Lampedusa is one of the first points of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants hoping to make a new life in Europe.

The film was a critics favourite during the Berlinale, leading the Screen Jury Grid into the final weekend of the festival, however during an interview with Screen director Rosi admitted a fear that his film might divide viewers.

Fire At Sea proved a hot seller for Doc & Film...

The International Jury of this year's Berlinale, the 66th—Meryl Streep (President), Lars Eidinger, Nick James, Brigitte Lacombe, Clive Owen, Alba Rohrwacher and Malgorzata Szumowska—has awarded the Golden Bear to Gianfranco Rosi's Fire at Sea. The Grand Jury Prize goes to Danis Tanović's Death in Sarajevo. Best Director: Mia Hansen-Løve for Things to Come. The acting awards go to Trine Dyrholm (The Commune) and Majd Mastoura for his performance in Mohamed Ben Attia's Hedi—which also wins the First Feature Award. Tomasz Wasilewski wins the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for the film he also directed, United States of Love. An Honorary Golden Bear has been presented to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, best known for his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese. We've got the complete of winners. » - David Hudson...

The International Jury of this year's Berlinale, the 66th—Meryl Streep (President), Lars Eidinger, Nick James, Brigitte Lacombe, Clive Owen, Alba Rohrwacher and Malgorzata Szumowska—has awarded the Golden Bear to Gianfranco Rosi's Fire at Sea. The Grand Jury Prize goes to Danis Tanović's Death in Sarajevo. Best Director: Mia Hansen-Løve for Things to Come. The acting awards go to Trine Dyrholm (The Commune) and Majd Mastoura for his performance in Mohamed Ben Attia's Hedi—which also wins the First Feature Award. Tomasz Wasilewski wins the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for the film he also directed, United States of Love. An Honorary Golden Bear has been presented to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, best known for his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese. We've got the complete of winners. » - David Hudson...

Documentary Fire At Sea wins Golden Bear; Death In Sarajevo wins Jury PrizeWinners of 66th Berlin International Film FestivalGolden Bear for Best Film

Fire At Sea (It-Fr), dir. Gianfranco Rosi

Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize

Death In Sarajevo (Fr-Bos), dir. Danis Tanovic

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize

A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery (Phil-Sing), dir. Lav Diaz

Silver Bear for Best Director

Mia Hansen-Love for Things To Come

Silver Bear for Best Actress

Trine Dyrholm in The Commune

Silver Bear for Best Actor

Majd Mastoura in Hedi

Silver Bear for Best Script

Tomasz Wasilewski for United States Of Love (Pol-Swe), dir. Tomasz Wasilewski

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution

Mark Lee Ping-bing for cinematography of Crosscurrent (China), dir. Yang Chao

Best First Feature Award (€50,000)

Hedi (Tun-Bel-Fr), Mohamed Ben Attia

Golden Bear for Best Short Film

Batrachian’s Ballad (Balada de um Batráquio), Leonor Teles, Portugal

Berlin Short Film Nominee for the EFAs

A Man Returned, [link...

The Golden and Silver Bears are set to be awarded shortly. Keep up with the latest here…

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Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize

Death In Sarajevo (Fr-Bos), dir. Danis Tanovic

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize

A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery (Phil-Sing), dir. Lav Diaz

Silver Bear for Best Director

Mia Hansen-Love for Things To Come

Silver Bear for Best Actress

Trine Dyrholm in The Commune

Silver Bear for Best Actor

Majd Mastoura in Hedi

Silver Bear for Best Script

Tomasz Wasilewski for United States Of Love (Pol-Swe), dir. Tomasz Wasilewski

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution

Mark Lee Ping-bing for cinematography of Crosscurrent (China), dir. Yang Chao

Best First Feature Award (€50,000)

Hedi (Tun-Bel-Fr), Mohamed Ben Attia

Golden Bear for Best Short Film

Batrachian’s Ballad (Balada de um Batráquio), Leonor Teles, Portugal

Berlin Short Film Nominee for the EFAs

A Man Returned, Mahdi Fleifel (UK-Neth-Den)

Audi Short Film Award (€20,000)

Anchorage...

Amir Soltani is covering the Berlin International Film Festival for The Film Experience this year, our first time at Berlinale!. For his first dispatch, he’s reviewed Tunisia’s Hedi

Although Hedi (Inhebbek Hedi) is Mohamed Ben Attia’s first feature film, it comes with the pedigree of being co-produced by the Dardenne brothers, and it’s not difficult to see why they were drawn to this story. Hedi (Majd Mastoura), a 25-year-old, Tunisian car salesman, would fit neatly into the gritty, realist universes of the brothers’ working class protagonists. A slow-burn study of an unhappy young man on the verge of getting married, Hedi builds up to an intensely emotional, rewarding finale that is once personal and political.

Under the overbearing, towering influence of the family’s matriarch, Hedi is the second of two sons whose father has passed away. Whereas the elder son has moved to France and...

In today's Berlinale 2016 Diary entry, we offer first impressions of three Competition titles: Mohamed Ben Attia's Hedi, a love story set in post-Arab Spring Tunisia with Majd Mastoura, Rym Ben Messaoud and Sabah Bouzouita, Jeff Nichols's Midnight Special, a science fiction adventure with Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher, Sam Shepard, Bill Camp and Scott Haze, and Denis Côté's Boris without Béatrice with James Hyndman, Simone-Élise Girard, Denis Lavant, Isolda Dychauk and Dounia Sichov. » - David Hudson...

In today's Berlinale 2016 Diary entry, we offer first impressions of three Competition titles: Mohamed Ben Attia's Hedi, a love story set in post-Arab Spring Tunisia with Majd Mastoura, Rym Ben Messaoud and Sabah Bouzouita, Jeff Nichols's Midnight Special, a science fiction adventure with Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher, Sam Shepard, Bill Camp and Scott Haze, and Denis Côté's Boris without Béatrice with James Hyndman, Simone-Élise Girard, Denis Lavant, Isolda Dychauk and Dounia Sichov. » - David Hudson...

The protagonist and namesake of Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi certainly isn’t cinema’s first leading man to seek validation from a more free-spirited woman, and it’s awfully unlikely that he’ll be the last. Indeed, the Tunisian filmmaker’s debut effort (which opened the Berlinale competition proper this evening) seems to want not just for western cinematic formula but also some of the western world ideology, too. It’s about two-parts romance, one-part Tunisian national mood piece. It concerns a love affair between an extroverted tour guide and a beta male who has found himself lost in a head-melting job and on the cusp of an arranged marriage. The country’s recent uprising seems to linger in his thoughts. It’s out with the old and in with the new, perhaps.

Incidentally, as Variety reported earlier today, Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne rescued the film from production hell,...