Each story has been produced into a short film, funded by the programme and supervised by mentors appointed by the Royal Film Commission of Jordan.
The Royal Film Commission – Jordan (RFC) and UNESCO, with the support of the European Union, have announced that five participating teams in the capacity building programme “Anthology Film: Women in the Maghreb-Mashreq Region” have wrapped up their short-film productions and moved on to the post-production phase.
Five stories, each from a different Arab country, were selected to take part in the first edition of the programme. All stories fall under the theme of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the Arab region and tackle issues such as domestic violence, physical abuse and discrimination against women.
Each story has been produced into a short film, funded by the programme and supervised by mentors appointed by the RFC. For this round, Jordanian Director Mahmoud Massad and Jordanian producer Azza Hourani will guide the selected teams all the way from script development to realising their films. The mentor-director and mentor-producer also provided on-set mentorship during each film’s shoot.
The five participating projects and teams are Waiting from Jordan by director Maysoon Hbaidi and producer Jana Zeineddine; Mercy Table from Egypt by director Taghrid Abouelhassan and producer Moatazbellah Hussein; Children’s Game from Morocco by director Rim Mejdi and producer Nabil Merrouch; Crossroad Happiness from Tunis by director Emna Najjar and producer Saber Gueblaoui, and Complaint from Lebanon by director Farah Shaer and producer Lucien Bourjeily.
The five short films will be edited and cut into one feature-length anthology film to be screened in November 2019, and distributed at international, regional and local festivals.
“Anthology Film: Women in the Maghreb-Mashreq Region” is a key component of “Enhancing a gender responsive film sector in the Maghreb-Mashreq region”, a regional project co-financed by the European Union, and implemented by a consortium led by UNESCO, in partnership with UN Women, Mena Media Monitoring (MMM) and the International Women Film Festival of Salé (IWFFS).
