Young film-makers arrive in London for first BBC Arabic film festival
Young film-makers from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, as well as Canada, France, Belgium and Switzerland, will arrive in London this week for Aan Korb Film and Documentary Festival, presented by BBC Arabic in partnership with the British Council, opening on Friday 31 October at BBC Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House.
Published: 30 October 2014
The opening night will feature the first full-length screening of Saudi’s Secret Uprising, made by the young Middle East based freelance journalist, Safa Al-Ahmad.
Frequent protests by the marginalised Shia minority in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province have gone largely unreported. Saudi journalist Safa Al-Ahmad has gained unprecedented access to film in the region speaking to activists, many of whom are on the government’s most wanted list. She examines how the Shia community is reacting to a government crackdown and provides a rare glimpse of the simmering unrest in Saudi’s Eastern province.
Safa Al-Ahmad is a Middle East based Saudi freelance journalist working in print, television and documentary. Her 2012 film Al Qaeda in Yemen was a finalist for the Rory Peck Award for Freelance Journalism and was nominated for the News and Documentary Emmy Award. Her essay Wishful Thinking was published in the anthology Writing Revolutions, winner of the 2013 English Pen Award.
Other programme highlights include Om Amira, a short-length documentary directed by Egyptian filmmaker Naji Ismail, and The Shebabs of Yarmouk, a feature-length documentary by French filmmaker Axel Salvatori-Sinz.
Aan Korb Film and Documentary Festival: Close Up Stories from the New Arab World with screenings, talks, debates and workshops over four days at the legendary Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House in London from 31 October – 3 November 2014, reflects the monumental changes in the Middle East and North Africa since the start of the uprisings in December 2010
Jointly organised by BBC Arabic and the British Council, Aan Korb (literally meaning ‘close-up’ in Arabic) will give an unprecedented platform in London to a generation that experienced events and in many cases risked their lives documenting them in the Middle East and North Africa. The Festival programme will include full length films and shorts, fiction and non-fiction, screening the work of professionals alongside citizen journalists armed with the everyday tools of mobile phones, hand-held cameras, social media, to document real, subjective stories.
Website: http://www.bbcarabic.com/aankorb
Twitter account: http://twitter.com/bbcarabic Hashtag: #AanKorbFest
Facebook: http://facebook.com/bbcarabic
YouTube: http://youtube.com/bbcarabic
Google Plus: http://google.com/+bbcarabic
MAA
