Thursday 1st October 2015// BBC Arabic today announced twenty selected works that will make up this year’s BBC Arabic Festival. The Festival will take place in the Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House in Central London and runs from Friday 30 October to Monday 2 November 2015. All events are open to the public and free of charge.
 
This year’s applicants were asked to submit work along the theme of ‘Rulers and Ruled: Power in a Changing Arab World’ and to expressly explore the struggles for power and control that continue to shake the region. The twenty final entries all showcase work that explores this theme but in a variety of different ways. Migration, exile, gender and sexuality are among the many diverse themes that feature this year.
 
The Festival will open with a premiere of BBC Arabic’s latest documentary, Pregnant and in Chains exposing the UAE’s strict laws surrounding sex outside marriage. The evening will be hosted by actor and comedian, Eddie Izzard.
 
The BBC Arabic Festival 2015 will screen works in four different categories – short films; feature documentaries; short documentaries and reportage from across the region. The winners of each category will be announced on the closing night gala, hosted by comedian Shappi Khorsandi with musical guest, the Lebanese rock group Mashrou’ Leila.
 
Tarik Kafala, Head of BBC Arabic said: “Whereas our first film and documentary festival focused on particular political events in the Arab world, the second takes a wider view to look at the social, generational and communal change sweeping the region. This year’s theme of power brings us a variety of stories from different locations in a range of languages. The festival’s strength is in presenting fiction and documentary films that reflect the current state of the Arab world in all its complexity.

We are very happy, once again, to welcome to our stage a new crop of filmmakers telling these stories. We are very proud to be welcoming back the first recipient of the BBC Arabic Young Journalist Award, Abdellfattah Farag, and to present his new short documentary entitled Shayma, which he produced after his training with us, at the opening ceremony of this year’s festival. The BBC Arabic Young Journalist Award is an intrinsic part of the festival, offering equipment and mentoring to the most promising filmmaker under the age of 30.

BBC Arabic is predominantly a provider of news about the region and the world, but we are very pleased to be bringing films that tell more personal, intimate and detailed stories to the home of the BBC here in London. Last year’s attendance surpassed all expectation. Each screening was packed and audiences stayed on for the post-film discussions. We saw this as a sign of a deep interest in this form of storytelling and are hoping to build on last year’s success.”
 
Jason Solomons, Festival judge and Film Critic, Mail on Sunday and BBC London 94.9 said:  “The average person in the London streets has certainly not seen enough Arab cinema. BBC Arabic Festival is very unique, heartening and exciting and brings something fresh to see on the big screen. I have seen enough of blockbusters to send me to sleep, I want to see fresh and original voices from somewhere I have never seen before and that’s what can happen at the BBC Arabic Film Festival”.
 
ENDS
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Note to editors//
 
Panel of judges:
 
•    Safa AlAhmad, Journalist, documentary filmmaker
•    Tina Carr, Director, Rory Peck Trust
•    Martin Chulov, Journalist, The Guardian
•    Gisele Khoury, TV presenter, BBC Arabic
•    Liliane Landor, Controller, Languages, BBC Global News
•    Orwa Nyrabia, Documentary Producer
•    Jason Solomons, Film critic
 
The twenty final works were selected by the panel in four different categories:
 
1.    Short Documentaries
 
•    Evdal: (24’) Directed by Kamiran Betasi, Iraq.
Abdallah is originally from a Christian part of Kurdistan. At a young age, he and his parents converted to Islam and were forced to resettle in a predominantly Muslim part of the region. However, their life became very difficult there. Evdal allows Abdallah to tell his story, recounting the poverty they faced and the challenge of life without medical assistance for his paralyzed mother. With this story, director Kamiran Betasi has sought to highlight the power of humanity over differences of religion and nationality.
 
Kamiran Betasi is a director, scriptwriter and photographer. Born in 1972 in Zakho in Kurdistan, Iraq he directed television documentaries and programmes before producing films. He has made a number of award-winning short films including Black Mirror, Silhouette and A Long Night. His films have screened in numerous film festivals including the Dubai International Film Festival, Duhok International Film Festival and the Gulf Film Festival.
 
•    Blue: (12’) Directed by Abo Gabi, Syria.
 
“Since I fled the Yarmouk Refugee Camp and came to Beirut, I have had a recurring dream. The dream takes me back to besieged Yarmouk, where death and destruction have settled in all its details. My memory retains images of the place and it is difficult for me to abandon it. Maybe the sound of my friend Ayham's piano changed the nightmare into dream and the place into a legend.” – Director, Abo Gabi
 
This unique story of Ayham, a pianist playing his music amidst the wreckage of the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, is narrated by the director, Abo Gabi. A musician himself, Abo Gabi fled Yarmouk and now tells this story by way of his dreams and memories fears and hopes. Though surrounded by rubble, his poetic storytelling takes audiences out of devastated Yarmouk, and into a place where strength, respect and semblances of normality persist.
 
Abo Gabi is a Syrian-Palestinian writer, musician and singer. He is co-founder of Reaction: the Palestinian Creative Collective in Yarmouk Camp, Damascus. With the collective, he directed a number short films and theatre pieces. Abo Gabi has also composed original musical scores for films and theatre. He has worked on a numerous collaborative projects with musicians from around the world. He launched his latest album, Hijaz Harb, in November 2014.
 
•    Safwan Market: (25’) Directed by Hadi Mahood, Iraq.
 
Safwan Market, located in the heart of Samawa, Iraq, is the city’s largest marketplace and most lucrative area for its inhabitants to earn a living. When the government decides to demolish the predominantly Shia’a market in order to build a Sunni mosque, the vendors working there have reason to revolt. Where will they take their business? How will they earn their livelihood? And why have the city developers decided on this particular spot?
 
Hadi Mahood is an award-winning filmmaker and theatre director. His works include The Drowned, a documentary based on confidential information from the Iraqi police file, Nights of Gypsy’s Descent, a documentary on gypsies subjected to hatred following the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, Iraq my Country, Collapse, Cart, and Ambulance Driver.
 
•    Second Hand Refugee: (24’) Directed by Jumana Saadeh, Jordan.
 
Like many others, a Palestinian family from Hebron was forced to leave Palestine in 1948. Exiled in Jordan, their Jordanian citizenships were revoked after the Black September events of 1970 and they were, once again, driven out of their homes. Sent to Syria to settle in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, this time they were not given any citizenship papers and were considered ‘unidentified’. Today, this family faces yet another expulsion. After hearing about their father’s execution via Facebook, the family decided to leave Yarmouk and head back to Jordan despite their lack of identity papers. Through Second Hand Refugee, audiences hear Thawra, Farah and Ahmed tell their story of life without formal identity papers and their repeating history of displacement.
 
Jumana Saadeh is a filmmaker from Jordan. She is currently a director and producer at Shashat Multimedia Productions in Amman, creating content for web and television. Second Hand Refugee is her first documentary. It was screened at the Al-Jazeera Documentary Film Festival in Qatar and the Altın Çınar Film Festivali in Turkey. Jumana holds an MA in Film Production from the University of Central Lancashire.
 
•    #73: (23’) Directed by Rekesh Shahbaz, Iraq.
 
#73 looks at the plight of the minority Yezidi community, many of whom have been left homeless by the rise of the so-called Islamic State. Having left his parents behind in his besieged village, Barakat Hassan travels back across the Syrian/Iraqi border in search of them. As we follow Barakat on this perilous journey, we hear the stories of other refugees who are crossing the border and get a first-hand account of the challenges they face.
 
Rekesh Shahbaz was born in Duhok, 1981. He is a theatre and film actor, a TV host and producer and a documentary director. Rekesh received his degree from the Institute of Fine Arts in Dohuk.
 
2.    Feature Documentaries
 
•    Arij: Scent of Revolution: (87’) Directed by Viola Shafik, Egypt.
 
Arij: Scent of Revolution is narrated by director Viola Shafik as she goes on a journey into the past and the disastrous attempts to develop the city of Luxor. Shafik interviews four different individuals: Safwat Samaan, a Coptic political activist; Francis Amin Mohareb, owner of the largest collection of historical negatives in Egypt; Alaa El-Dib, a socialist writer and Awatef Mahmoud, a 3-D designer. Each character and event in the film contributes to provide a holistic, yet also personal, description of how Egypt has arrived at its present situation.
 
Viola Shafik is a film academic and freelance filmmaker and curator. She is the author of Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, (AUC-Press, Cairo, 1998) and Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class and Nation, (AUC-Press, 2007). She has taught Film Studies at the American University in Cairo and has worked as a consultant for international film festivals and training initiatives, including La Biennale di Venezia, the Dubai Film Connection and the Rawi Screenwriters Lab.
 
•    Cairo Drive: (80’) Directed by Sherief AlKatsha, Egypt.
 
Cairo, Egypt is a city of 20 million people, 23,600 miles of road and 2 million cars. Taxis, buses, donkey carts, and swarms of people, all jockey through the obstacle course that is daily life. Sitting at a cultural intersection, Cairo is a city where different faiths, races, and social classes all share a few clogged arteries of tarmac. Cairo Drive explores life in one of the world’s most populated cities from its streets. Shot between 2009 and 2012 the film explores the country’s collective identity, inherent struggles and the sentiments that lead through the historic changes taking place in Egypt today.
For years, Egypt has had two story lines: the official propaganda and the reality on the streets. Nowhere is this clearer than on the city roads.
 
Sherief Elkatsha was born in the United States, raised in Cairo and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He has been making films since 2006. His feature documentary, Butts Out (2006), received Best Documentary Award at the New England Film and Video Festival. His second film, We Are Watching You (2007), co-directed with Jehane Noujaim, was broadcast on 42 networks around the world. Cairo Drive is Sherief’s third feature length film. It won the award for Best Film from the Arab World in the Documentary Competition at the 2013 Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
 
 
•    The Immortal Sergeant: (72’) Directed by Ziad Khalthoum, Syria.
 
After the Syrian revolution, Ziad Kalthoum served as a reservist whilst also working as assistant to the acclaimed Syrian film director Mohammed Malas. The Immortal Sergeant follows Ziad through a typical day in 2012, giving us a glimpse of his fellow Syrians as they struggle with their grief and trauma whilst attempting to continue with their ordinary lives. The Immortal Sergeant, borne out of his experience working on Ladder to Damascus, has screened at numerous festivals and was awarded a prize at the Locarno Film Festival.
 
Ziad Kalthoum is a soldier in the morning and a filmmaker for the rest of the day. He was born in Homs, Syria in 1981. Before making feature documentaries, he worked as assistant director on several films, series and TV programmes. His first documentary Aydil (Oh, My Heart) (2012) was selected for the Carthage Film Festival.
 
•    This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees: (56’) Directed by Mani, Syria.
 
This is Exile is an intimate portrait of child refugees forced to flee from the violence of Syria’s civil war to neighbouring Lebanon. Filmed over a year, the documentary allows the children to tell their stories in their own words capturing the truth of how they deal with loss, hardship and a political consciousness beyond their age. The testimonies in this film form an intelligently crafted snapshot of the human cost of this ongoing war. This topical documentary is also a timeless look at the essence of exile. By now, over 4 million people have been forced to leave their homes to neighbouring countries, half of them are children.
 
Mani is an award-winning independent filmmaker and photographer. He has worked in Niger, India and Pakistan, settling in Syria in 2011. His first documentary, Horror of Homs (2012), produced by ITN/Channel 4 News, won the Royal Television Society Award, the Rory Peck Award, the Amnesty International Media Award and the Front Line Club Award, among others. His photos have appeared in Paris Match, Le Monde, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Magazine, Die Zeit and the National Geographic Magazine. His films have aired on Channel 4, CNN, CBS, France 2, Canal+ and ZDF.
 
•    Tuk-Tuk: (75’) Directed by Romany Saad, Iraq.
 
Tuk-Tuk follows Sharon (15), Bika (14) and Abdullah (12), who have little choice but to drive tuk-tuks to earn an income for their families. Director Romany Saad points his camera at these hard-working young boys as they share their street-wise views on the chaos that surrounds them, sneaking cigarettes and missing out on their education. Besieged on all sides by police, thieves and competing taxis, the boys take every chance to find a fleeting escape from the stronghold of poverty. This energetic documentary illustrates the resilient outlook of three children who have become adults before their time and their struggle to hold onto their childhood.
 
Romany Saad is an Egyptian filmmaker born in Cairo in 1974. Romany has been making short films since 2010. His films have screened internationally and won several festival awards. These include the Naubel Film Festival in Tunis (2012); the Busan International Short Film Festival in South Korea (2012); and the Alexandria International Film Festival in Egypt (2011). Tuk-Tuk, made in 2015, is his first feature non-fiction film.
 
3.    Short Films
 
•    Baghdad Messi: (15’) Directed by Sahim Omar Khalifa, Iraq.
 
Despite their deeply conflicted surroundings, 10-year-old Homoudi and his friends are obsessed with football. But as an amputee, his friends do not often accept him on the field. In order to win their comradery, he has to offer them something that others cannot - a TV set on which to watch the glorious Champions League. When this TV set breaks, he travels with his father through violent Baghdad in order to fix it. Baghdad Messi, winner of multiple international awards, tells the universal story of a child finding solace in a simple passion.
 
Born in Kurdistan, Sahim Omar Khalifa emigrated to Belgium in 2001. After completing film school in 2008, he teamed up with A Team Productions with whom he made two of his award-winning short films - Baghdad Messi (2013) and Land of the Heroes (2011). These two award winning films have featured in film festivals globally, receiving prominent recognition. Sahim, along with A Team Productions, is currently producing his first feature film.
 
•    Ibn Bnoot: (10’), Directed by Mina Magdy, Egypt.
 
Ibn Bnoot is a fantastical comedy that imagines a world in which women are the dominant sex, controlling men’s lives and choices. This short film follows Adam as he grows up subject to his mother’s domineering decisions, obliged to stay home, cook for his sisters and eventually marry the suitable bride who asks for his hand. This inverse world, while presenting a comical juxtaposition, highlights the issue of women’s rights and subjugations across patriarchal societies. “The film is aimed more at men, telling them to wake up. I wanted to shock men into realising that if the things happening to women were happening to men, they wouldn’t be able to bear it.” – Mina Magdy
 
Mina Magdy is an Egyptian director and producer. Prior to making Ibn Bnoot, he directed documentaries, Sufi videos, television programmes and live concerts. He is now working on his first feature film.
 
•    Odd: (13’) Directed by Haitham Dabbour, Egypt.
 
Adel Iskandar is Christian Egyptian in Cairo. When he goes home to find that his neighbours have just fixed the building elevator, they invite him to be the first to try it out. This welcoming gesture becomes the setting for an awkward encounter between neighbours of different religions and levels of devotion. This ironic short film is a satirical look at the co-existence of people in predominantly Muslim Egypt. The characters’ subtle, yet loaded, differences suggest a power dynamic between the majority and minority ethnic and religious groups. Odd stars the popular and charismatic Egyptian actors Khaled El-Nabawy, Sayed Ragab and Khaled Bahgat, directed by Karim Elshenawy.
 
Haitham Dabbour is an award-winning Egyptian journalist and scriptwriter. He has worked on several documentary and fiction films and participated in numerous international film festivals. His screenplay for the film Photocopy was short-listed for the 2014 Sawiris Award. He wrote and developed the documentary film Tahrir 2011 which went on to win the UNESCO Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award in the Oslo Film Festival. In 2012 he founded ElWatanNews.com, which won the best website prize in 2013.
 
•    One Minute: (7’) Directed by Dina Naser, Palestine.
 
During the summer of the 2014 Gaza war, in the battered neighbourhood of Shujaiya, 37-year-Salma made her home her shelter from the bombing. She and her daughter are protected in relative calm from the attacks outside, until she receives a text message warning her of her and her baby’s impending fate. One Minute imagines the moments between funny text messages from a friend and an evacuation notice from the Israeli army. Powerless at the mercy of the tactics of war, all Salma and her baby have are those moments.
 
Dina Naser is a filmmaker and TV producer based in Jordan. In 2011, her short documentary Shamieh told the story of an ageing Palestinian woman living in the Zizya refugee camp in Jordan. Tiny Souls investigated the lives of Syrian refugee children and is now being developed into a feature length documentary. One Minute is her third film.
 
•    The Great Safae: (16’) Directed by Randa Maroufi, Morocco.
 
The Great Safae is a fictional, experimental documentary inspired by a real person. Referred to as ‘The Great Safae’, she was a transvestite who spent part of her life working as a domestic servant for the director’s family. Throughout this time, her ‘true’ sexual identity eluded everyone in the house. Based on this ambiguity, Maroufi re-imagines ‘Safae’ as she goes through her daily routine, working in the house and changing from male to female. The film stylistically weaves in snippets of conversation from various members of the family about social views on gender behavior. The Great Safae is a story of interchanging realities.
 
Randa Maroufi is an artist who works across photography, installation, performance, sound and film. Her work has a focus on issues surrounding gender and public space.  Maroufi has exhibited in institutions globally, including the Marrakech Biennale, the Arab World Institute in Paris, the African Photography Meeting in Bamako and the International Kurzfilmtage International Short Film Festival in Dresden. She lives and works between Tangier and Lille.
 
4.    Reportage
 
•    Land of Men: (4’) Directed by Kelly Ali, Libya.
 
Land of Men explores the opinions of both men and women on the subject of women’s rights after the revolution in Libya. The collapse of Gadhafi’s regime brought a new hope to women but many felt the reality fell short of their optimistic vision.
 
Kelly Ali is a Libyan filmmaker, director and editor. He is passionate about examining different cultures and discovering different people to share their stories. His work has been officially selected to screen at the Locarno Film Festival and the Middle East Now Festival.
 
•    Mount Gourougou: (9’) Directed by Bruno Rocchi, Morocco.
 
Hundreds of sub-Saharan African migrants have taken up residence in the treacherous conditions of Mount Gourougou.  As they wait to attempt the crossing into Spanish territory, they recount their previous attempts to cross the border and their determination to start a better life.  Bruno Rocchi tells their stories with compassion and conviction, painting a vivid picture of the inhospitable environment and hostility they face from both the Spanish and Moroccan police. 
 
Bruno Rocchi is an Italian filmmaker with a focus on observational and ethnographic filmmaking. Between 2012 and 2015 he travelled the northern part of Morocco and shot a documentary about the working situation in the Rif, Bled el Makhzen as well as producing and directing Mount Gourougou in 2013.
 
•    Sisa, Iron Lady: (3’) Directed by Aly ElSotohy, Egypt.
 
Sisa’s husband died while she was pregnant with their first child. This short report tells the extraordinary story of how she has spent the past 43 years dressing as a man in order to work and support her child. Sisa, Iron Lady illustrates her determination to overcome gender bias.
 
Aly ElSotohy is a director, producer and editor. After graduating in 2007, he started his career in investigative journalism. Aly now works as Director for the Department of Multimedia Newspapers in Egypt.
 
•    The Runner: (4’) Directed by Mohannad Eissa, Libya.
 
Celebrating victory in an international race, Libyan runner Tari Al-Shibli revealed a tattoo showing the flag of independence. In this film, he describes the consequences he faced on returning to Gadhafi’s Libya.
 
Mohannad Eissa is an emerging filmmaker based in Tripoli, Libya. The Runner is his first short documentary, made during a creative workshop organised by the British Council and Scottish Documentary Institute, in partnership with Tripoli School of Art.
 
•    A Day and A Button: (7’) Directed by Azza Hamwi, Syria.
 
A Day and A Button is a window into a regular day in today’s Damascus. Artist Azza Hamwi takes us on a visually poetic tour around the city as she tries to transcend the lines that have been drawn. Her attempts to walk freely in her home city are intercepted by gender segregation, sectarian divide and political inclinations. With her we experience the place, the people and the boundaries as she shares her internal thoughts on identities and ideologies that now rule the place.
 
Born in Hamma, Syria in 1980, Azza Hamwi is a visual artist working with animation, illustration and video. She has exhibited internationally at museums and galleries in Finland, Turkey, France, Bulgaria, Serbia and Syria. Hamwi has illustrated over 25 books. In 2014, three of her works were acquired by The British Museum. She started making films in 2011. A Day and A Button is her third film.
 
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For more details the festival, please visit: http://www.bbcarabic.com/festival
 
About BBC Arabic:
 
BBC Arabic is a multimedia service, available on TV, radio, online and via mobile handheld devices, 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Radio was established in 1938, the website bbcarabic.com - in 1998, and TV - in 2008. BBC Arabic is both the largest and the oldest of the BBC’s non-English language services.
 
BBC Arabic covers political, social and cultural issues that matter to its diverse audiences in the Middle East, North Africa and across the world. It has its own correspondents in key locations in the region and around the world. While programmes are produced from studios in London and Cairo, the BBC’s vast network of correspondents is key to its coverage of the Middle East and world events.
 
BBC Arabic’s overall audience reach has risen by more than 11% to 36.2 million adults weekly - up from 32.2 million in 2012/2013 (audience research: 2014).
 
For media enquires about BBC Arabic Festival please contact Mohammed-Ali Abunajela at: Mohammed-Ali.Abunajela@bbc.co.uk