‘Made in Qatar’ filmmakers for this year’s Ajyal Film Festival.
Ready to press play for our homegrown films? This year’s ‘Made in Qatar’ documentaries and short narratives made name in the international scenes and are once again available to watch at selected cinemas in Qatar.
Ten films are included for this year’s ‘Made in Qatar’ showing under the 9th Ayjal Film Festival. Among included are Border by Khalifa Al Thani, Fever Dream by Ania Hendryx Wójtowicz, There Were People by Mohamed Al Hamadi, Don’t Get Too Comfortable by Shaima Al Tamimi, A Lens Under Water by Fatma Zahra Abderrahim, Virtual Voice by Suzannah Mirghani, Atlal (Remnants) by Balkees Al Jaafar and Tony ElGhazal, And Then They Burn The Sea by Majid Al Remaihi, When Beirut Was Beirut by Alessandra El Chanti, and Olayan by Khalifa Al Marri.
Filmmaker and Doha Film Institute Film Programming Coordinator Majid Al Remaihi, who directed the documentary ‘And Then They Burn The Sea’, said the Qatari films are still at a young age and they need to be matured and nurtured. “We don’t need to rush and launch into a big production just to focus on international acceptance and exposure, I think we’re gonna really hurt ourselves and shoot ourselves on the foot,” he explained.
To date, three of the ten films in the Made in Qatar programme has been recognized in the international arena including Al Remaihi’s ‘And They Burn The Sea’, Al Tamimi’s ‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’, and Mirghani’s ‘Virtual Voice’.
Al Remaihi added that cinema can be a language and it does not have necessarily be a sociopolitical message. “It can kind of be more about evoking feelings, enriching certain feelings that goes beyond the dramatic, the political, social,” he explained.
Ania Hendryx Wójtowicz, director of ‘Fever Dream’ said: “Qatar is a bit of melting pot, it’s international and diverse.” Her film “speaks to somewhat universal emotional process.” She explained that it was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and encompasses the “fear, isolation, uncertainty experiences that is in a way unifies everyone in the world regardless of socio-economic status or nationality or other factors.”
El Ghazal, co-director of ‘Atlal’, meanwhile said Qatar is definitely a home to a lot of nationalities, him being a Lebanese filmmaker, their main character a Palestinian who lived his entire life in Qatar and featuring this country and belongingness to Qatar as the main part of the film “is something that bridges different nationalities involved.”
Tamimi meanwhile said that the pandemic time ‘unified’ all of us in some level because we are in lockdown and cannot travel.
Abderrahim, director of ‘A Lens Underwater’, further explained that diversity is “not only about differences, it is about identifying ourselves among messages through our films or being able to receive a message set to our film differently. Working in a project about the beauty in Qatar is something that matters in a big scale for everyone in the world, environment is something that unifies everyone and since there is not a lot of films made about the environment especially in Qatar, I feel that as an environmental activist, advocate of Sustainable Development Goals, I think that all of these big issues are something that unifies us and it’s an important message that we as filmmakers can make other people watch our films in many and different ways.”
More women filmmakers have joined in this year’s festival with 48 percent.
Al Tamimi said that regardless of the huge chunk of female filmmakers, she believed that while working on a project, “I don’t think of myself as female or non-female. We have everything of us our own story to tell, plus the abilities to do what we want, get funding and support,” she said.
Made in Qatar Programme is presented by Ooredoo this year, the next line up of show will be on Thursday, November 11, at VOX Cinema at Doha Festival City.
