Malmö – 5 May 2022
The second day of the 12th Malmö Arab Film Festival (Thursday 5 May) included a variety of activities, seminars and professional meetings, all of which witnessed an extensive presence of the audience of the city of Malmö and the festival’s guests from Arab filmmakers, journalists and critics.
The day events kicked off early with the opening of the 8th edition of Malmo Industry Days (MID), the industry arm of the festival, through a conversation with Abdullah Al Eyyaf Al-Qahtani, CEO of the Saudi Film Commission, moderated by critic Ahmed Shawky, in which Al Eyyaf presented the commission strategies and its most important goals and projects. Saudi Cinema is the guest of honour of MAFF.
In parallel with the In-Convo, the pitching of the projects participating in MID and competing for its valuable prizes began. Five feature narrative projects in the development stage were presented, followed by three feature documentary projects in the development stage.
MID activities continued with two panel discussions: the first entitled “Why is it important to make films?”. Speakers were Saudi producer, Roua Al Madani, Lebanese director and writer Khaled Ramadan, and Swedish producer Martin Persson, while Swedish critic and programmer Pernilla Frykholm was the moderator. The second panel discussion was entitled “Cinematech: The New Norm”, moderated by Adly Thoma, CEO & chairman of Gemini Africa, in which El Gouna Festival Director Intishal Al Tamimi, Egyptian producer Sherif Mandour, and Swedish expert Ragnhild EK spoke.
At the same time, Panora Cinema witnessed a large attendance of the audience who came to watch a rich program of the latest productions of Arab cinema, on a day that witnessed the screening of 12 feature films and a group of short films. Including from the feature films competition: “Sola” by Algerian Salah Issaad, “Farha” by Jordanian Darin J. Sallam, and “Streams” by Tunisian Mehdi Hmili, and from the documentary competition films “Fiasco” by Lebanese Nicolas Khoury, “Captains of Zaatari” by Egyptian Ali El Araby, and ” Suspended Wives” by Moroccan Merieme Addou.
The first group of films participating in the short film competition was also screened, and from the guest of honour program, two Saudi films “The Sun of Gnosis” by Faris Godus and “The Tambour of Retribution” by Abdulaziz Alshlahei were screened. While from “Films Worth Watching” program the audience watched two films: “On the Fence” by Egyptian Nesrine Lotfy Elzayat and “I’ll Go to Hell” by Tunisian Ismahane Lahmar.
As usual, Malmö Arab Film Festival hosted a reception with Arab music at Panora Cinema Hall, followed by the screening of two films from Arabian Nights programme, “Quareer”, which was co-directed by five Saudi female filmmakers, and ” Bara El Manhag” by Egyptian Amr Salama.
Commenting on the activities of the first day of the festival, MAFF founder Mouhamad Keblawi said: “We do not realize the number of daily activities in MAFF until the end of the day, when we discover how much effort we have made in the continuous movement between the festival sites. The first and second days were successful and we hope to go on for the rest of the festival”.
