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After 1169 submitted projects and an incredibly challenging selection process, twelve feature films were selected to receive Hubert Bals Fund Development Support grants of €10,000 each. Among them, the six were from Asia. The winners include Kamila Andini, once more cementing the current prowess of Indonesian cinema, Palestinian Muayad Alayan, whose “A House in Jerusalem” screened in Rotterdam in 2023, Midhun Murali, whose animation “Kiss Wagon” won a special mention from the Grand Jury and the Fipresci award this year in Rotterdam. Check all the list below, along with Amp Articles on the recipients.

Conversation with the Sea, Muayad Alayan, Palestine

Four Seasons in Java, Kamila Andini, Indonesia

Goodbye for Now, Kasım Ördek, Turkey

Le goût de la pêche, Elene Mikaberidze, Georgia

MTV i.e. Mars to Venus, Midhun Murali, India

Notes of a Crocodile, Daphne Xu, Cambodia, China, Canada

Midhun Murali won a Tiger Special Jury Award at IFFR 2024 for the dazzling mixed-media fantasy Kiss Wagon.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund (Hbf) has selected 12 feature film projects for its 2024 Development Support scheme.

The 12 projects, which will receive a grant of €10,000 to support their development, were selected from a record 1,150 submissions.

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They include Christopher Murray’s Piedras Gigantes which will be among the first Chilean national fiction feature films shot on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the remote Pacific Ocean island.

Piedras Gigantes tells the story of the archaeologist Katherine Routledge arriving on the island in 1914, who played a conflicted role amidst an indigenous uprising. Murray’s The...

Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s supernatural drama “A House in Jerusalem,” about a young girl’s enigmatic quest to unravel the mystery around her new home, has released a chilling trailer ahead of its world premiere in the Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam’s Limelight strand. Heretic is handling international sales.

Alayan’s third feature follows a young girl (Miley Locke) who is forced to move with her father (Johnny Harris) from the U.K. to Jerusalem, in the hopes that a new beginning can help her heal from her mother’s sudden death. Soon after settling into an old house in a neighborhood known as the Valley of the Ghosts, a series of mysterious events take place, for which Rebecca is blamed. Diving deep into the mystery of the house and the mystical city of Jerusalem, Rebecca sets out on a journey to discover what hides in the shadows of the house.

Both the title and opening voiceover of the Jordanian feature “The Alleys” make us think we’re in Naguib Mahfouz territory, evoking the backstreets of a neighborhood where “average” people lead intersected lives and everyone knows everyone else’s business — a place where, as the narrator tells it, “a story spreads like wildfire.” It’s a great model to follow, but debuting director Bassel Ghandour, who wrote and produced the superb “Theeb,” is ultimately more invested in making a dark thriller, one without the subtlety of Mahfouz or his attention to character.

Set in an eastern district of Amman, the film follows a lowlife whose desire to run away with his respectable girlfriend leads him and others to make very foolish alliances. , but will have difficulty connecting to more mainstream boulevards.

Ali (Emad Azmi) and Lana (Baraka Rahmani) are in love, but they have to disguise it from her mother...

Actress’s recent credits include Gaza Mon Amour, Tel Aviv On Fire and The Reports On Sarah and Saleem.

Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadi was injured on Sunday while participating in a protest in the Israeli city of Haifa against Israeli police brutality and the planned expulsion of Palestinian families from their long-time homes in East Jerusalem.

A source close to the actress said she had been filming the demonstration on Haifa’s central Ben Gurion Avenue when Israeli police moved in to clear the hundreds of protestors. She was hurt when a police stun grenade exploded on the back of her right leg.

Cannes–The Pop Up Film Residency, a mentorship program launched this year by former TorinoFilmLab artistic director Matthieu Darras and Slovak producer Juraj Krasnohorsky, has announced three new residents, four new hosts, and two new creative partners for 2019.

Based in Bratislava, the program offers a three-week residency in Slovakia each month, along with a series of international residencies throughout the year with a growing network of partners, including Cannes Critics’ Week, Eave and the Doha Film Institute.

“The big difference between this residency and other support schemes for talents is that it’s really tailor-made,” said Darras. “Once we really get an understanding of the person, the project, we actually find the good residency.”

A former Cannes Critics’ Week programmer, Darras described the Pop Up Film Residency as a “passion project” designed to offer mentorship on an intimate scale. “I have 20 years of experience running labs, where I usually have programs with 20, 25 projects,...

The Reports On Sarah And Saleem The short-listed nominees for the 3rd Arab Cinema Center Annual Critics Award have been announced. Vying for Best Film are Ab Shawky's Yomeddine, which sees a cured leper take an unorthodox road trip across Egypt with a young orphan, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's Oscar-nominated Capernaum, about a boy suing his parents for neglect, and The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, directed by Muayad Alyan, which shows how an extramarital affair has sociopolitical consequences in Jerusalem.

The awards were voted on by 75 critics from 34 countries and the winners will be announced at a fringe event at Cannes.

Film analyst Alaa Karkouti, managing partner of the Arab Cinema Center (Acc) and CEO of Mad Solutions, said: "Every year, the number of the film critics, who are jury members of the Annual Critics Awards, from inside and outside the Arab world increases. They come together to view the best Arab.

Nadine Labaki and A.B. Shawky’s films gained three nods each.

Two 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or contenders top the third edition of the Annual Critics Awards organised by the Arab Cinema Centre (Acc).

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum and Egyptian director A. B. Shawky’s Yomeddine have both clinched three nominations.

Following with two nominations each are Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s drama The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, about the ill-fated affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, and Moroccan director Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia, revolving around a woman in Casablanca who illegally gives birth out of wedlock.

A total of 16 projects selected for Rotterdam industry event.

CineMart, the co-production market held during the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr), has named the 16 feature projects to be showcased at next year’s edition.

Held January 27-30 during the festival (which runs Jan 23 – Feb 3), the event invites filmmakers to pitch their projects to a host of attending film professionals in tailored one-to-one meetings, as well as presentations that are open to all CineMart guests.

This year’s selection features one returning filmmaker, Nathalie Teirlinck, who previously presented her project Past Imperfect at CineMart in 2015 – that film went on to play...

Durban — “The Reports on Sarah and Saleem,” directed by Muayad Alayan, scooped best picture at the 39th Durban Intl. Film Festival, which wrapped Saturday night with an award ceremony at the Suncoast Cine Center complex.

The film tells the story of the political ramifications of an extra-marital affair between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman. Variety described it as a “taut psychosocial drama.”

In a pre-recorded message from Jerusalem, Alayan offered thanks to the audience in South Africa – a country, he said, “which we as Palestinians hold in a very special place in our hearts” – while dedicating the award to “all the filmmakers out there in this world who are fighting all forms of injustice with their films and their art.”

The award punctuated a Diff whose 2018 edition “had a very special focus on hearing and seeing the marginal voices, with a focus on celebrating diversity,” according to Lliane Loots,...

Durban — The Durban Int’l. Film Festival opened Thursday night with a celebration of South African womanhood and a commitment to diversity in film, even as it mourned the passing of a festival icon and commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela.

The 39th edition opened with Jerome Pikwane’s “The Tokoloshe,” a psychological thriller about a destitute hospital cleaner who’s forced to confront the demons of her past to try to save a child’s life.

In prepared remarks, delivered by a colleague at Thursday’s opening ceremony because she wasn’t able to attend, Diff manager Chipo Zhou described the movie as a parable of womanhood in a country plagued by sexual violence.

“It is a horror film…unveiling the menace that is our everyday burden as women in this country,” she said, adding more hopefully that the movie “sets the scene for a...

Gustav Möller wins best director for The Guilty.

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade won the 44th Seattle International Film festival’s Golden Space Needle audience award for best film and Morgan Neville’s current US release Won’t You Be My Neighbor? won best documentary as the festival came to a close at the weekend.

In other key awards, grand jury honours went to The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, Dead Pigs, Rust, Inventing Tomorrow, and Thunder Road.

Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade was named best actress while Miguel Ángel Solá of The Last Suit won the best actor prize.

Rotterdam 2018: Interview with the Special Jury Award and Hubert Bals Audience Award Winning Filmmaker of ‘The Reports on Sarah and Saleem’Rami Alayan was awarded the Special Jury Award for exceptional artistic achievement for his screenplay of Muayad Alayan’s film ‘The Reports on Sarah and Saleem’. The film also won the Hubert Bals Fund Audience Award.Muayad Alayan is a Palestinian filmmaker and cinematographer based in Jerusalem. He studied film in San Francisco and his graduation project, the documentary ‘Exiles in Jerusalem’ (2005), won the Kodak Award in the same city. His short film debut ‘Why Sabreen?’ (2009), made with and about the youth of his home village, was screened and won awards at film festivals worldwide. Alayan is co-founder of Palcine Productions, a collective of filmmakers and audiovisual artists in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. In addition, he has worked as a film and cinematography instructor at several academic institutions in Palestine.

Heretic Outreach also closes first deals on Holiday.

Athens-based sales outfit Heretic Outreach has closed deals on two of the titles it introduced at last month’s European Film Market (Efm) in Berlin.

First deals have now been closed on Muayad Alayan’s The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, which was a prize winner at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it had its world premiere.

The title has sold to France (Bodega Films), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (Mooov), Greece (Rosebud.21), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes) and former Yugoslavia (Mediterranean Film Festival Split).

The film follows a Palestinian man and...