Erige Sehiri’s Under the Fig Trees, Asmae El Moudir’s The Mother of All Lies, Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah a Boy and Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays are just some of the recent notable films to have benefitted from the Final Cut in Venice. The Venice Film Festival’s industry program supporting works in progress from all African countries and Middle East territories (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen) is back for a ninth edition and this year we find the likes of Yemeni-UK director Sara Ishaq‘s The Station (about a women-only petrol station in a gender-segregated, war-torn village in Yemen) and Palestinian-British filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky‘s Standing at the Ruins. Some of these will be launched as early as next year and as we can see in the titles mentioned above crack major film festival line-ups. The 8 work-in-progress films selected are:…
House of the Wind – Kouemo Yanghu, Auguste Bernard (Cameroon, Benin, France, Belgium)
My Semba – Hugo Salvaterra (Angola)
Standing at the Ruins – Saeed Taji Farouky (Egypt, United Kingdom)
The Station – Sara Ishaq (Yemen, Jordan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar)
Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep – Rakan Mayasi (Belgium, Lebanon, Palestine)
Documentary
Legacy (Soleil, Lune, Étoiles) – Mamadou Dia (Senegal, France)
Out of School – Hind Bensari (Denmark, Morocco)
Untitled Project from Yemen – Mariam Al-Dhubhani (Yemen, Qatar, Norway, France)
