“This past year and a half have been a period of hardship and distress in our region,” remarked festival director and co-founder Nada Doumani, recalling recent the humanitarian tragedies in Sudan, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine. “We’ve come to understand the urgent need to tell our own stories and represent our narratives as they are.”

Just weeks after Iranian missiles and drones fired at Israel passed over Jordanian airspace, sinisterly visible in the night sky, the festival got underway without a hitch, unfolding in the ancient capital from July 2 to 10. From their headquarters in downtown Amman, organizers programmed the screenings of 62 films in three venues, including the historic Rainbow Theater and the Royal Film Commission’s outdoor venue with a superb view of the city’s hills, along with the Taj Cinema multiplex.

Although the festival kept the red carpet in the closet and requested that festivities be muted in recognition of the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, the opening and closing ceremonies had a quiet dignity. Along with 11 films from Jordan, Palestinian cinema was the most viewed. It has been in high demand at Arab festivals these last years, coinciding with and reflecting on the conflagration in Gaza. With Jordan’s large Palestinian population topping 3 million, Palestinian films found a warm welcome in Amman, where the raw truth of the war and its horrors are known and openly discussed. In the words of the festival’s President and co-founder Princess Rym Ali, “Today, after two harrowing years where words like ‘genocide’ and ‘ceasefire’ were slow to gain international recognition, we underline the urgency of telling our own stories honestly and unapologetically.”

Producers Rashid Masharawi and Laura Nikolov brought to Amman the world premiere of From Ground Zero +, a five-film continuation of last year’s seminal Gaza compilation. It includes Mohammad Al-Shakri’s epic portrait of Hassan, a teenage boy separated from his family and forced to survive on his own in southern Gaza, as well as the stand-alone feature by Abdulrahman Sabbah, The Clown of Gaza. The life of a plucky street performer embodies the anxiety, hope and resilience of displaced Palestinians.

Winning the Jury Award in the Arab Narrative Feature section was Mahdi Fleifel’s acclaimed film about Palestinian refugees navigating a harsh and brutal world in Greece, To a Land Unknown. Yet another film that immersed its audience in the raw experience of Gaza was Areeb Zuaiter’s lively and unexpected Yalla Parkour, integrating real videos of daring parkour athletes climbing and jumping from bombed-out buildings in a multi-layered documentary. The talented Zuaiter is also head of programming at the festival.

Leading Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri was on hand on opening night to support the short film Upshot, which opened the festival. Directed by Maha Hajj, it spins a quietly moving tale around a shocking family tragedy and how an elderly couple deals with it.

Among the other excellent Arab titles screening was Lotfi Achour’s electrifying tale from Tunisia – based on a true story – of a young shepherd boy traumatized when he and his teenage cousin venture into a remote cove for a swim and are captured by ISIS. Only one of them will survive. Red Path won the top award, the Black Iris, in the Arab Feature-Length Narrative section, as well as the Audience Award.  From Iraq comes another tale of a young farm boy who is a witness to history. Oday Rasheed’s Songs of Adam masterfully evokes a timeless Iraqi society of Mesopotamian farmers from WW2 to the present. The two excellent young leads, Ali Helali in Red Path and Azzam Ahmed in Songs of Adam, shared a much-deserved Special Mention for Best First-Time Lead Actor.

Similarly, shared themes led to shared prizes in the Arab Feature Documentaries category, where the Black Iris was split between the comic-tragic Moroccan portrait of a domineering mom and her five daughters, (Y)our Mother by Samira El Mouzghibati, and a daughter’s attempts to reconnect with her aged father in Tripoli in the often humorous We Are Inside directed by Farah Kassem.

Winning the Non-Arab Film Award was an American doc by Sarah Friedland, the much-admired Familiar Touch, set in a care home for artists with memory loss. And in the Arab Short Films section, the Black Iris went to A Passing Day by Rasha Shahin, a Cairo-based filmmaker raised in Syria, who describes the brief encounter between two strangers in a city scarred by war.

Finally, the Fipresci Award – given on the 100^th anniversary of the venerable international critics association, founded in 1925 – went to the powerful Egyptian prison documentary by Bassam Mortada, Abo Zaabel 89.

A reprieve from intense stories about war and displacement was offered by the events surrounding Ireland as Guest Country of Honor, represented by the acclaimed director Jim Sheridan. Articulate and amusing, Sheridan talked about his theatrical origins and recited poetry, as well as speaking out frankly about world politics. His conversation with leading Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah unfolded around dramatic excerpts from In the Name of the Father and My Left Foot.

Far from the familiar tales of conservative religious households holding back the creative development of rebellious young daughters, Yde Zellama describes her heroine as a modern, outgoing girl with a mind of her own. Eya is on the cusp of puberty, still a bit of a tomboy and a child, unselfconsciously bonding with her older brother Younès and his friends. She is also straddling her family’s traditional Islamic culture with the Westernization implied by her Brussels school and Belgian bestie Melissa, with whom she dances, to the sound of loud techno music, in TikTok videos. By the end of the film, the path Eya finds is very much her own choice, although it leaves open a number of ambiguities that leave a puzzling aftertaste.

In the first scene Eya, played to perfection as the sassy, spoiled baby of the family by Safa Garbaoui, waits to be picked up after school by an older helmeted boy on a big noisy motorbike. Her coquettish attitude, the way he meekly coddles her and hands over his music earbuds on request, the way he speeds dangerously through traffic as though to impress her, all make it seem like a case of young romance. It’s not till they get home to the Tunisian quarter of Brussels, walk into the same house and kiss their mom, that their status as siblings is clarified.

Nevertheless, the deep emotional tie between Eya and Younès is undeniable. Sleeping over at her girlfriend’s house, she is overcome with sudden anxiety for him, and before the night is out her relatives come for her. Younès is dead. No one tells her how or why, and only much later does she learn he has been killed by a stray bullet at a football game. As though no one is to blame.

The next hour of the film is all about the girl’s encounter with grief and mourning, which she is negotiating for the first time in her life. The house fills with relatives, some wailing and hysterical like Eya’s pregnant married sister, most dazed and mute with shock. The mayor arrives to offer his condolences and express his regret that Younès was “a collateral victim”. Eya, who is running for school president, doesn’t hesitate to confront this representative of city power with a written demand that their street be renamed in her brother’s honor, because he had a good heart and everyone loved him. One doubts there is much chance of this happening, but a later scene shows she hasn’t forgotten the idea.

The film’s rhythm is stately, even slow. Younès’s friends arrive and, for lack of space downstairs, gather in his room. Each one of them is carefully individualized: Yamine, who acts crazy with grief and cries he will build a mosque in his friend’s memory; a boy who sings a moving hymn; others who comfort Eya with their silent solidarity. Unlike the adults downstairs, everyone prays. There is no reticence in expressing emotion or weeping among these strong young men, who hug each other desperately in their pain. These are among the film’s most memorable moments. The final scene in the cemetery shows a new, more mature Eya emerging from her grief to assume her place in the community, standing veiled beside her father during the traditional rites. What this portends for her future life could be another film.

 Director, screenwriter: Maja-Ajmia Yde Zellama
Producers: Nabil Ben Yadir, Marc Goyens
Cast: Safa Garbaoui, Mehdi Bouziane, Mounir Amamra, Adnane El Haruati, Saber Tabi
Cinematography: Grimm Vandekerckhove
Editing: Dieter Diependaele
Production design: Eve Martin
Production company: Komoko (Belgium) in association with Quetzalcoatl (Belgium), 10:80 Films (Belgium)
World sales: MAD World
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Arab Narrative Feature Competition)
In Dutch, French, Arabic
83 minutes

Screened out of competition at the Amman Film Festival, where Zuaiter is the head of programing, this intriguing film has already won the Grand Jury Prize in International Competition at Doc NYC and the Golden Firebird Award for documentary at Hong Kong.

It is not about the Gaza conflict with Israel per se, but rather captures the terrible feeling of constraint that oppresses the young men there, who can only leave Gaza’s tightly controlled borders with luck and the utmost effort to wade through bureaucratic paperwork. That sense of entrapment provides the unstated motivation for Ahmad and his friends to self-train in the discipline of parkour on the sand dunes and among the rubble of the bombed-out buildings around them.

Said to originate with the French military’s parcours du combatant (path of the warrior), parkour is a high-discipline training program whose goal is to overcome obstacles in an environment with speed and agility. The attraction of the sport in Gaza is obvious. Over and over we see heart-stopping videos that the band of young athletes has shot on their phones, vaunting their daring dives and tumbles off cliffs and concrete girders protruding from the rubble. One of these buildings is identified as the former airport in Rafah, now completely unrecognizable after being destroyed by Israel beginning with the Second Intifada in 2000. Thus is the history of Gaza subtly interwoven into the film.

Giving the story a framework and putting the action scenes into context, editor and co-writer Phil Jandaly periodically cuts away to fixed-frame shots of a cozy upstairs room in a leafy, snow-bound landscape, where Zuaiter sits at her computer – the very image of the filmmaker in control of her material. From this civilized control room she talks to Ahmad in dusty Gaza, in conversations that are relaxed and personal. The fact that she prefers to remain off-screen gives even more power to her calm voice guiding their stories.

The careful camera set-ups in these scenes create a poetic evocation of displacement, albeit a comfortable one, that sets up the dual POVs. Though cleverly layered for maximum contrast, the nostalgia Zuaiter professes for her mother, who passed away in 2012, and for her childhood and Palestinian homeland remains more spoken than emotionally projected. Lacking vivid images, the director is repeatedly shown drawing an imagined Mediterranean sea, like a persistent memory she can’t get rid of. Underlined by delicate music scored by Diab Mekari, these interludes struggle to project the requisite emotion. It’s a relief when Ahmad validates her wish to be “one of us”, when he simply tells her she is, indeed, Palestinian.

Her plaintive longing to set foot in Gaza seems as impossible as Ahmad’s persistent dream of following in the footsteps of two older parkour pals and emigrating to Europe. Since we know what kind of war is coming, the boy’s journey has an urgency that overpowers the filmmaker’s pursuit of memory and her unease at having a U.S. passport and a Palestinian identity. And yet, in the closing scenes set in 2023, one of the two will achieve their goal against all odds.

Technically the film is an astute contrast between different styles of cinematography. The amateur Internet  footage from Gaza turns that devastated landscape into a symbolic commentary on history. In the remarkable opening shots, Ahmad’s friends practice backflips with nonchalance while bombs explode spectacularly in the background. Another unforgettable scene shows a parkour athlete, Jinji, climbing up the indented face of a very tall building. He is almost at the top when he loses his footing, his fall followed by a trembling phone camera, breaking 50 bones but surviving. In a film full of implicit danger, it is the only case where real damage is done.

Director: Areeb Zuaiter
Screenwriters: Areeb Zuwaiter, Phil Jandaly with Nino Kirtadze, Johan Simonsson, Salwa Nakkara, Alex Szalat
Producer: Basel Mawlawi
With: Areeb Zuaiter, Ahmad Matar
Cinematography: Umit Gulsen, Ibrahim Al Olta, Marco Padoan
Editing: Phil Jandaly
Music: Diab Mekari
Sound design: Yehya Zakaria Breshe
Production company: Kinana Films (Sweden)
World sales: Arthood Entertainment
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Out of Competition)
In Arabic, English, Swedish
89 minutes

Mirroring Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand And Walk, which offers a heartbreaking account of the last days of a young Gazan photojournalist before her death in an Israeli bomb attack early this year, The Clown of Gaza is proof of the incredible talent and hardened spirit of the Gazans who persisted in providing the world with just and empathetic images of the victims of the Israel-Hamas war. It is part of Palestinian filmmaker-producer Rashid Masharawi’s new From Ground Zero+, an ongoing initiative designed to highlight the work of Gazan directors, which premiered at the Amman Film Festival out of competition. Sabbah’s hour-long feature should be of interest to festival programmers or news broadcasters seeking powerfully told and finely filmed personal stories to support Gazans and substantiate coverage of their plight.

“Suffering and pain stay with the living,” notes The Clown of Gaza’s protagonist Alaa Meqdad, as he recalls the death and destruction he has witnessed during his journey from his heavily bombed neighbourhood in Gaza City to the border outpost of Rabah. But we don’t see him shed a single tear. Maybe it’s because he’s glad everyone in his entire family – both parents, four sisters, his wife and their two children – are still alive, but perhaps it’s down to his built-in instincts as a professional clown, trying to tease laughter from people suffering under one of the most deadly and devastating humanitarian disasters in modern history.

When not performing for the children who, like himself, live in the many refugee camps dotted across Rabah, Meqdad visits street stalls set up in front of ruined buildings and attends to the needs of his loved ones in their makeshift home. Veering away from easy sentimentality, Sabbah shows Meqdad’s quotidian life as it is: though short of the comforts of home, Meqdad’s tent isn’t seething with squalor. While he manages to get enough food for his big family, his chats with neighbours and friends reveal the financial abyss staring at them.

The climax of The Clown of Gaza plays out in the last quarter of the film, when Meqdad and his family up stakes and return home. With the help of cinematographers Mouaz Abu Allaban, Ahmad Al Danaf and Mohammad Al Sharif, Sabbah captures the arresting vision of thousands of Gazans marching homeward. In that image alone, individual name and faces come together as a whole, an acknowledgement of the steeled collective will of a people as they try their best to defy the fate imposed on them by deadly aggressors.

Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Producers: Laura Nikolov, Rashid Masharawi
Cinematographers: Mouaz Abu Allaban, Ahmad Al Danaf, Mohammad Al Sharif
Editors: Denis Le Paven
Sound designer: Sarah Fasseur-Leroux
Production companies: Coorgines Production, Masharawi Fund Production
Venue: Amman International Film Festival
In Arabic
61 minutes

Arab Feature-Length Narrative Films Awards:

–  Black Iris Award
“Red Path”
directed by Lotfi Achour (Tunisia).

–  Jury Award:
“To a Land Unknown”
directed by Mahdi Fleifel (Palestine).

–  Special Mention – Best first-time scriptwriter:
Tamara Owais for the film “Simsim” (Jordan).

–  Special Mention – Best First-Time Lead Actor
shared between Ali Helali in “Red Path” (Tunisia) and Azzam Ahmed in “Songs of Adam” (Iraq).

– Special Mention – Best First-Time Lead Actress:
Saja Kilani in “Simsim” (Jordan).

–  Audience Award: “To a Land Unknown”
directed by Mahdi Fleifel (Palestine).

Arab Feature-Length Documentary Awards:

–   Black Iris
shared between “(Y)our Mother” directed by Samira El Mouzghibati (Morocco)
and “We Are Inside” directed by Farah Kassem (Lebanon).

–   Jury Award: “Tell Them About Us”
directed by Rand Beiruty (Lebanon).

–  Special Mention: “Abu Zaabal 89”
directed by Bassam Mortada (Egypt).

–  FIPRESCI Award: “Abu Zaabal 89”
directed by Bassam Mortada (Egypt).

– Audience Award: “Tell Them About Us”
directed by Rand Beiruty (Lebanon).

Arab Short Film Awards:

–   Black Iris: “A Passing Day”
directed by Rasha Shahin (Egypt – Syria).

– Jury Award: “Those Who Never Left”
directed by Pierre Mouzannar (Lebanon).

–  Special Mention: “Mango”
directed by Randa Ali (Egypt).

– Audience Award: “Your Excellency”
directed by Musaed Alqudifi (Kuwait).

Non-Arab Film Awards:

–  Black Iris: “Familiar Touch”
directed by Sarah Friedland (USA).

– Jury Award: “Dog on Trial”
directed by Laetitia Dosch (Switzerland).

– Audience Award: “Tales from the Magic Garden”
directed by David Sukup, Patrik Pass, Leon Vidmar, and Jean-Claude Rozec (Czech).

Founded in 2003, Jordan’s film commission is a financially and administratively autonomous government organization led by a board of commissioners and chaired by Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, with the aim of developing an internationally competitive audio-visual industry in the country. It is a member of the Association of Film Commissioners International and received the Location Managers Guild Award for Outstanding Film Commission in 2017 for its work on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story filmed in the Wadi Rum desert. Other sci fi spectaculars that have tramped through its sands include The Martian and both parts of Dune, along with many other famous titles like David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, shot on the real locations of the story.

Now a new scale of cash rebates has recently gone into effect that will offer foreign production companies up to 45% back on the money the spend. It should hep offset the lull in activity caused by the recent hostilities between Iran and Israel. Though Jordan itself is not at war, it has shot down missiles and drones passing over its airspace. The RFC, for the time being, has shifted its attention to preparing for the future.

As Mohannad Al Bakri, the managing director of the RJC, describes it to The Film Verdict, it’s been twenty years since Jordan entered its modern era of filmmaking, counting the fruitful partnership between the Royal Film Commission and the Sundance Institute as a starting point. When the Rawi Screenwriters Lab opened in Jordan, it marked a turning point for filmmaking in the region. Two feature films came out of the inaugural Lab in 2005 and premiered at Sundance – Najwa Najjar’s Pomegranates and Myrrh (Palestine) and Cherien Dabis’s Amreeka (Palestine/Jordan/U.S.) In 2012, another Rawi alumna premiered her first feature at Venice: the ground-breaking Wadjda by Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour. In all, 29 regional films have come out of the Rawi Screenplay Lab produced by 15 Arab countries, a resource for the whole region.

Interestingly, the focus is on the creative storytelling side of the business rather than the technical aspects. Today the Labs extend to television writing, producer training and, with the Mosaic program, first- and second-time directors.

Along with the screenwriting labs, which now are held in eco-lodges in the spartan desert landscape of Jordan’s deep south, facilities for production and post-production have sprung up. The newest of these, built during the difficult Covid years, are two state-of-the-art film and TV studios in Amman called Olivewood. Overseen from a futuristic control room by Operations and Production Advisor Khaldoun Abumsallam, the two identical 1,500-square meter sound stages are flanked by wardrobe, hair and makeup and carpentry areas, along with considerable outdoor space for shooting.

Throughout the Commission’s existence, notes Al Bakri, “the royal family has been tremendously supportive. The studio was built on a proposal by His Majesty. It completes our film industry.”

Beginning with 22 very short films screened in the compilation From Ground Zero at Cannes last year, this invaluable series of eyewitness documentaries finds a natural continuation in the new anthology From Ground Zero +. Its international premiere at the Amman Int. Film Festival contained four shorts that gave the filmmakers more space to develop their true stories and characters, all emerging from the hellish cauldron of bombed-out Gaza.

It is clearly an ongoing project. At the Amman Film Festival, producers Rashid Masharawi and Laura Nikolov also screened the full-length The Clown of Gaza under the Ground Zero + banner (it is being reviewed separately by The Film Verdict.) It is important that the writer-directors are not professional foreign reporters but are Gazans who find themselves trapped in the middle of the conflict. Their insiders’ point of view changes everything.

Told from a very female perspective, Etimad Wishah’s Very Small Dreams is a deep dive into the nitty-gritty problems women are forced to deal with when they and their children become refugees. While in the first From Ground Zero Wishah’s short Taxi Wanissa remained an unfinished symbol of the way war interrupts lives and creative endeavors, her new film captures the extenuated frustrations and suffering endemic to women living in a war zone. With amazing candor, they talk to the camera about how the lack of hygiene in the tents where they live lead to rashes and painful ailments. A young woman who gave birth to her fourth child in the camp recounts to a medic how the lack of sanitary pads and diapers forces her to cut up strips of toweling for herself and the baby, who both suffer from bacteria-related infections because the towels are washed and rewashed without soap. Another woman, who never expected to live in a tent, has such a long list of illnesses and complaints she wishes she could die. And a third young woman refugee feels depressed by the lack of privacy in sharing a tent and sleeping with 8 to 15 strangers. This plain-speaking, down-to-earth documentary hits the viewer hard, emphasizing the psychological toll these women struggle with every day, with no end in sight.

With Hassan the film switches to a male p.o.v., in an anguishing and deeply revealing portrait of a 17-year-old boy who finds himself in the south of Gaza, separated from his parents and siblings. Directed and filmed with intense compassion by Muhammad Al Sharif, it follows the boy’s frightened journey through the bombed-out ruins of buildings in search of a safe place to sleep – a hospital, a school, a food kitchen, even the street. He is obsessed with a desire to rejoin his family up north (presumably in Gaza City), but each time he sets out on the road north, soldiers and bombs turn him back. Yet when a cease-fire is called, hopes are raised that there might still be a chance to go home. The final shots show Hassan grinning happily as he marches on a high road, epically silhouetted against the sky alongside many other hopeful travelers, as David Chivers’ moving score stirs up mixed emotions at this universal scene.

Emotional content is fore-fronted in Aws Al Banna’s The Wish.  The 26-year-old filmmaker, who is a TV and stage actor as well as a playwright and drama teacher, uses his past experience with children’s theater to work with a group of teenage girls traumatized by the war. Encouraged to remember the cherished people and things they have lost, they break down sobbing during rehearsals as they bring to mind missing parents and siblings, homes reduced to rubble, even silky long hair that had to be cut for lack of soap and water. Meanwhile the filmmaker recalls the loss of the woman he loved and his own struggle for healing and wholeness.

Similarly, Reema Mahmoud’s Colors under the Sky spotlights a creative young woman whose determination to make her voice heard offers a way out of her terrible psychological burden of being homeless, orphaned, and a refugee. Amal is a painter and singer who says she was on the verge of a breakthrough after being invited to a big festival abroad in October 2023. Then war breaks out and Instead of revealing her talent to the world, she ended up alone in Rafah, singing songs of rebellion and painting murals on the wall.

These individual stories may be miniscule facets of the face of suffering in Gaza, but taken together they start to build into a much clearer picture than the stereotyped war reportage of the legacy media. The choice to lengthen the films is a good one, giving much more depth.

Producers: Laura Nikolov, Rashid Masharawi
Production companies: Masharawi Fund for Films and Filmmakers, Coorigines Production (France)
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (out of competition)
In Arabic

“Very Small Dreams”    99
20 min.
Director: Etimad Wishah
Cinematography:
Editing: Marion Boe

 “Hassan”   88
30 minutes
Director, cinematography: Muhammad Al Sharif
Editing: Marion Boe
Music: David Chivers

“The Wish”        94
30 mins.
Director: Als Al Banna
Editing: Denis Le Paven

“Colors Under the Sky”  87
20 mins.
Director: Reema Mahmoud
Editing: Marion Boe

The filmmaker’s presence is not seen but frequently felt right from the beginning, when five 17-year-old friends address the camera and the director’s apparent suggestion they stop smoking while it is running. This sets up an off-screen dynamic with sometimes humorous consequences, as the boys – most of them from well-to-do families – bitterly complain about their teachers. Their lack of respect shows in the fact they sleep through classes. On the other hand, the teachers seem keenly aware they are being filmed and obsessively debate how they can outperform the online classes that their students study until late into the night.

This is the great debate of the moment: whether traditional teaching in the presence of someone who can answer questions is still relevant, given the allegedly superior explanations of online teachers. Surprisingly, parents who can afford the cost are quick to buy into digital learning at the insistence of their workaholic offspring. The vast array of topics available —  physics, biology, chemistry, history, religion, math, etc. – makes sure students are perennially behind in their studies and are always stressed out.

With no time for sports or extracurricular activities, much less girls, the five unnamed boys who are center stage appear to do little besides study. But there is one aspect of the larger world that captures their attention and disturbs them: the red-hot war in Gaza. It seems no accident that historic As-Salt is on the old main highway connecting Amman with Jerusalem: it represents the outside world slipping into their sheltered lives. Watching the news on their cell phones, they blame their teachers and principal for not talking about the war in assemblies or classes. Thus they hatch a daring plan to take the podium during an assembly and call out official indifference to the Palestinians’ desperate plight. But instead of detonating this potentially explosive material in a grand finale of student rebellion, in the best tradition of films about young people, Essa chooses the path of quiet realism. When the key moment happens, it goes practically unnoticed, drowned out by all the noise around online classes.

The filming has a white, washed-out look that perhaps befits the somewhat decrepit, unpainted and unadorned hallowed halls of the school, and sound quality varies.

Director, screenwriter: Abdallah Essa
Cinematography: Laith Yaghmour
Editing: Eyad Hamamm
Production companies: Royal Film Commission, Golden Frame, Silwan Production House
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Arab Feature Documentary competition)
In Arabic
63 minutes

Additionally, AFID organized sessions on web-series – The Spark Series – which is the first showcase of its kind in an Arab festival, offering creators a unique platform to present their work to industry professionals, distributors and an engaged audience.

This year, 18 projects from the Arab world were chosen to compete. A distinguished jury comprised of Dora Bouchoucha (Tunisian producer), Joseph Bitamba (Burundian filmmaker), Eduardo Guillot (Spanish journalist and film programmer) and Linda Mutawi (Jordanian producer) chose the winning projects to receive a range of cash and in-kind prizes made possible through the support of AFID’s partners.

Development Awards:
• The Orange Grove (Jordan, Canada) – Directed by Murad Abu Eisheh and produced by Rula Nasser, Veronika Molnar and Roger Frapper
*Won The Royal Film Commission – 7,000$ cash award for a project in development – Awal Film

• The Masters of Magic and Beauty (Egypt) – Directed by Jad Chahine and produced by Baho Bakhsh & Safei Eldin Mahmoud
*Won The Royal Film Commission – 7,000$ cash award for Arab project in development

• Ping-Pong (Palestine) – Directed by Saleh Saadi and produced by May Jabareen
*Won Masna3 – 2,500$ cash award and 2,500$ in-kind consultation award for a project in development

• The Last Mayor of Jerusalem (Jordan, UK) – Directed by Kinda Kurdi and produced by Kinda Kurdi & Brian Hill
*Won Slate – In-kind production services award for a Jordanian Awal Film project in development worth 25,000$

• Six 2 One (Jordan) – Directed by Tamir Naber and produced by Ghassan Salti
*Won GNSF – 5,000$ cash award for a Jordanian project in Development – Awal Film

• From Temporary to Semi-Permanent (Jordan, Palestine) – Directed and produced by Bayan Abuta’ema
*Won INQ – In-kind development support for a Jordanian first film project in development worth 3,800$

Post-Production Awards:
• Asphalt (Jordan) – Directed by Hamza Hamidah and produced by Mahmoud Massad
*Won The Royal Film Commission – Jordan – 7,000$ cash award for a project in post-production

• You Don’t Die Two Times (Algeria, Tunisia, Germany, France) – Directed by Ager Oueslati and produced by Raouf Oueslati, Thomas Kaske & Dhia Jerbi.
*Won IEFTA – 6,000 € cash award for an Arab project in post-production.

• Testosterone (Morocco) – Directed and produced by Ali Benchekroune& Mohamed Bakrim
*Won Rum Pictures – In-kind Color Grading and DCP award for a project in post-production worth 10,000$

• All That The Wind Can Carry (Egypt, Qatar) – Directed by Maged Nader and produced by Tamer Elsaid & Maged Nader
*Won Unison Studios – In-kind sound design and mixing award for a a project in post-production worth 15,000$

• Asphalt (Jordan) – Directed by Hamza Hamidah and produced by Mahmoud Massad
*Won Creative Media Solutions (CMS) – In-kind packaging services award for a project in post-production worth 7,000$

• Amal (Jordan, Syria) – Directed by Khaled Ahmad Al Swidan and produced by Lujain Hamdan
*Won Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) – In-kind award for bespoke consultation sessions and two free memberships for one year for a documentary project in development or post-production.

Market Awards:
• The Masters of Magic and Beauty (Egypt) – Directed by Jad Chahine and Produced by Baho Bakhsh & Safei Eldin Mahmoud
*Won Red Sea Fund $5,000 cash award for Jordanian first film project in development

• You Don’t Die Two Times (Algeria, Tunisia, Germany, France) – Directed by Ager Oueslati and produced by Raouf Oueslati, Thomas Kaske & Dhia Jerbi
*Won Red Sea Fund $5,000 cash award for Jordanian first film project in post-production

• Like a Bird in The Sky (Egypt, Lebanon, Spain) – Directed by Amal Ramsis and produced by Amal Ramsis & Jana Wehbe
*Won ART $10,000 cash award for a narrative project in development

• Alicante (Algeria, France, Spain) – Directed by Lina Soualem and produced by Omar El Kadi
*Won Cairo International Film Festival – In-kind award for a project to participate in Cairo Film Connection 2025

• From Temporary to Semi-Permanent (Jordan, Palestine) – Directed and produced by Bayan Abuta’ema
*Won Alexandra Viets – In-kind consultation award for a project in development

• From Temporary to Semi-Permanent (Jordan, Palestine) – Directed and produced by Bayan Abuta’ema
*Won French Institute in Jordan – In-kind award for a Jordanian project to travel to France.

For one thing, the Amman Film Industry Days (AFID, held July 2-9, 2025) is closely aligned with the festival run by Nada Doumani and where that festival is trending. For Alasad and Doumani, the raison d’etre of a festival is not glamour and entertainment but quality time – an intimate festival. This year’s chosen theme, “A World Unscripted,” seeped into the Industry pitching rooms and panels and even into their outlook on narrative. “This year, under the theme ‘A World Unscripted’,” writes Alasad in his catalog introduction, “we embrace uncertainty not as a flaw in storytelling, but as its very foundation.

“Gone are the days when every story needed a perfect arc, a clear genre and a tidy resolution,” he continues. “At the Industry Days, we take pride in creating a space where this kind of raw, unscripted vision is not only welcomed but also needed.”

It is a perspective made necessary, in part, by the uncertain days the Middle East is living through, with the future a work in progress. Perhaps it is this inability to control and predict the near future that has led Arab cinema, in Alasad’s view, to get “bolder and wilder – no rules can hold back its creativity.”

Strikingly, AFID has doubled in size since its second edition. In addition to the festival’s guests, 400 local and international participants registered for the section this year, traveling at their own expense. And AFID received over 150 film submissions from 16 countries (only 12% of them could make the final selection.)

In the end, 18 films were selected to take part in the pitching platform, showcasing the diversity of voices from 8 countries. Hosted by pitching trainers Stefano Tealdi from Italy, Jordan’s creative producer Zeina Shanaah, and Lebanese director, writer and producer Elias Khlat, the pitching platform continues to be a “central pillar” of the AFID program for emerging filmmakers.

It is flanked by the Amman Projects Market, now in its 4^th year, an Actors Roundtable with George Khabbaz, Script Majlis hosted by Alexandra Viets, a roundtable on safety on documentary film sets, EAVE on Demand: AI Tool and a hands-on workshop on Unreal Engine for hybrid storytelling. Then there are new initiatives like Incubator, aimed at helping beginners maximize their networking at festivals.

Also quite noteworthy is the number of films that have now started with AFID and gone on to completion and release. These include many well-known titles like Areeb Zuaiter’s Yella Parkour, Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias, Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah a Boy and Khaled Mansour’s Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo. The first and last are both competing in this year’s festival.

A coproduction between Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and France, the film has been travelling to festivals in its original version featuring Czech dialogue, most recently alighting in the Amman Intl. Film Festival’s new Non-Arab Feature competition. It is also known by the dire title Of Unwanted Things and People, which doesn’t convey the joyful flights of imaginative animation that light up the film.

With warmth and understanding, and a good measure of gentle humor aimed at the younger set, four directors create colorful, animated universes – harmonizing but distinct — where magical things happen under the noses of the characters. The screenplay is an adaptation of stories written by Czech playwright and writer Arnost Goldflam, who appears in puppet form as a roly-poly, white-bearded Grandpa in a segment directed by French filmmaker Jean-Claude Rozec, known for the short Specky Four-Eyes.

The other filmmakers involved are Czech director David Sukup (Light, The Mechanics), Patrik Pass, co-writer of The Last Bus and creator of Slovakia’s first graphic novel, and Leon Vidmar, the Slovenian director of the award-winning short Farewell.

When we first meet Grandpa, he is withdrawn and listless following the recent death of his wife. When his grandkids Suzanne (8), Tom (4) and Derek (10) come to visit, they are dismayed by the change in him. Then Suzanne remembers how grandma told them stories, using her straw hat to collect ideas from each listener, and the girl assumes the role of storyteller in her place.

A particularly resonant and daring tale is the story of a loving middle-class family with two kids, little Emily and an older brother who likes to scare her. Mom puts on her makeup and plays the piano a bit; then along with dad (is the resemblance to Gomez Addams accidental?) they prepare to leave the kids at home for an evening out. A few gestures are enough to sketch the four characters’ personalities and the family dynamics. Not long afterwards, the doorbell rings. Two aging policemen regretfully inform the kids their parents were struck by a truck when they stepped out of the building. And unless a relative turns up soon, they will have to go to a children’s home to live. Pop-eyed and unable to speak, the kids fall asleep while their pet cat transforms itself into something magical.

There is more magic in the story of frightened little Jonas and his bossy older brother. Looking for treasure in an abandoned and rather obviously haunted house, they only find apple cores. When his brother huffs off in frustration, Jonas gets left behind and meets the kindly old woman who owns the house. She still mourns her long-dead husband Leonid… but keeps a special memento of him in the attic. Her kindness, far from scaring Jonas, helps him to overcome his fears and rebalance the relationship with his sibling.

Finally, there is the story of a lonely, depressed widower who goes to the cemetery every day to read the paper at his wife’s grave. One day he seems to have a heart attack; he turns into a bird and discovers how liberating it is to fly above the town, ending up in a blooming garden with all sorts of feathered friends, who crown him king of the birds.

The visuals have a bright, colorful, often cluttered look that should appeal to young children, while the narrative is filled with hope and encouragement to overcome the dark moments of life. The viewer is left with the positive image of the girl who is both storyteller and healer for her family.

Directors: Patrik Pass Jr., Jean-Claude Rozec, David Sukup, Leon Vidmar
Screenwriters: Kaja Balog, Blandine Jet, Petr Krajicek, Maja Kriznik, Marek Kral, Patrik Pass Jr. based on a story by Arnost Goldflam
Producers: Juraj Krasnohorsky, Jean-Francois Le Corre, Kolja Saksida, Martin Vandas
Voice cast: Mikulas Cizek, Arnost Goldflam, Zofie Hanova, Zuzana Kronerova, Alex Mojzis, Pavla Beretova, Ivan Trojan, Dana Cerna
Cinematography: Mathilde Gaillard, Simona Weisslechner
Editing: Adela Spaljova
Music: Lucia Chutkova
Graphic design: Patricia Ortiz Martinez
Visual effects: Michal Struss
Sound design: Miroslav Chaloupka
Production companies: Maur Film (Czech Republic), Artichoke Film Production (Slovakia), Zvviks (Slovenia), Vivement Lundì! (France)
World sales: New Europe Film Sales
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Non-Arab Feature competition)
In Czech
71 minutes

If there’s one thing the film is good at capturing, also thanks to D.P. Ikbal Arafa, it’s atmosphere, and the twisting up-and-down streets of Algiers after dark create a garish suspense all by themselves. One muggy evening, while the city is grappling with a water shortage, kids are playing games in the street when a black car swoops down on them and nabs Azhar. The little girl is sucked through a car window like she was being eaten by a monster.

Rather too suddenly, the police are on the scene, led by the angry young chief inspector Sami Sadoudi (Nabil Asli). There is a suspect, Fouzi, an unbalanced homeless man who sleeps in a parking lot, and there is a dangerous lynch mob gathering around him. Sadoudi and his cynical deputy Khaled (Hicham Mesbah) are in the thick of it with their hands full, when they are joined by an unwelcome third cop: Dr. Dounia Assam (Meriem Medjkane). Mousey but courageous and completely single-minded, she ignores every order from her furious superior to beat it. It’s obvious she and Sami are going to fall in love.

But first there is a girl to find. Dr. Dounia, a police psychiatrist specialized in PTSD, announces she has to be found within 48 hours, or statistics say she is dead. To rack up the tension, she sets a clock on a countdown and stares at it nervously. There are broad hints that she knows what traumatic stress is first-hand, but this important thread is never followed up clearly. Has she been assaulted as a child herself? Her breathless interview with a neighbor woman who looked out for Azhar suggests a personal connection to the crime, but that’s as far as we get into the doctor’s backstory.

The first part of the film is burdened with the blatant misogyny and antagonism of Sami and Khaled toward Dounia, a relationship misfire that is drilled in long after it has become irritating. When Dounia is absent from a scene, Sami and Khaled squabble viciously and mutually threaten to leave the force. Khaled, the older and more jaded cop, has been formed by the Algerian civil war in the 1990s and claims the police are justified in using lethal force against suspects. Sami, an avid reader of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, takes a slightly higher road.

Amid outbursts of yelling and frantic action, including a wild, well-shot foot chase up endless staircases, they stage stakeouts, waiting to spot their man. At a certain point, young rookie Nabil (Ali Namous) joins them, confused as to whose orders to follow. Like Sami, he comes from Algiers’ lower depths and knows these streets like the back of his hand. But it’s obvious to most viewers they won’t be the ones who locate Azhar and catch the serial killer.

In the end, there’s too much missing from the story and too many easy “clues” and stereotypes to make Algiers a memorable variation on today’s hard-hitting police thrillers. But the genre energy is there and it will be worthwhile to see where the filmmaker will go next.

Director, screenwriter: Chakib Taleb-Bendiab
Producers: Khaled Chikhi, Yasmine Dhoukar
Cast: Meriem Medjkane, Nabil Asli, Hichem Mesbah, Ali Namous, Chahrazad Kracheni
Cinematography: Ikbal Arafa
Production design: Hamid Boughrara
Editing: Fouad Benhammou, Chakib Taleb-Bendiab
Music: Marielle de Rocca-Serra, Chakib Taleb-Bendiab
Production companies: Temple Production (Algeria), Clandestino Production (Tunisia), Dinosaures (France), Flirt Films (Canada)
World sales: MAD Solutions
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Arab Narrative Competition)
In Arabic
92 minutes

Ever since his 2005 debut docufiction Underexposure brought filmmaker Rasheed to prominence – it was the first film to come out of occupied Baghdad after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the death of Saddam Hussein – the Baghdad-born, L.A.-based writer, director and producer has described his native land in terms at once gruesomely real and penetratingly lyrical. From the angst-ridden depression of the city in his 2010 Qarantina to the Brooklyn-shot If You See Something (2021) about an Iraqi seeking political asylum in the U.S., he has brought reality checks to our understanding of modern-day Iraq. Songs of Adam is a striking addition to this effort.

Amid the verdant fields and palm groves of Mesopotamia in 1946, we first meet Adam, a young boy whose grandfather has just died. His calm, reflective face shows no particular trauma when he is placed among the village men to witness the old man’s body being washed, but this brush with human mortality is the decisive moment when he vows never to grow up.

While the years pass and the people around him live through the five ages of man – boy, adolescent, youth, adult and old man – Adam remains a pure soul in a child’s body. Mysteriously, he can slow his heartbeat almost to a standstill, and there is something of the savant about him that terrifies the superstitious villagers. When the crops are attacked by weevils and fail for the second year in a row, he becomes a scapegoat and an outcast.

Then, along with personal misfortune, the ravages of history infringe on the handful of characters, who include Adam’s cowardly younger brother Ali, his girl cousin Iman who carries her childhood crush on him throughout her unhappy life, and his big-hearted shepherd friend Anki. War, revolution and ISIS appear out of nowhere to torment and destroy the idyllic community that had seemed unchanged since the birth of mankind, and Adam is always present as an innocent observer.

Rasheed’s Peter Pan screenplay is convincing because it is so brilliantly low-key, seamlessly interwoven with D.P. Basim Faihad’s cinematography of a natural world (shooting took place in Anbar province) that, at times, seems close to paradise.

The story itself has interesting parallels with Gunter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum, which later became a Palme d’Or-winning film directed by Volker Schlondorff. Grass’s poignantly ironic vision of the Second World War and its aftermath in Europe is seen through the eyes of little Oskar Matzerath, who decides he will never grow up after his father tells him he’ll become a grocer. Like Adam, it is implied that he has an adult’s ability for thought and perception and a spiritual development that is complete at birth, giving these fantasy children a unique perspective on history.

Unlike Oskar, Adam will avoid the mental asylum that his brother Ali threatens him with. But then, Rasheed’s own vision is much more poetical, bringing a sweeping sadness to the images of a changed, dehumanized Iraq that conclude the film.

Child actor Azzem Ahmad (the only member of the deeply moving cast who is not played by five different actors) plays the unworldly Adam with a sort of supernatural lightness that keeps the character balanced between the human and the universal.   Integrating perfectly into the rich natural soundscape are some extraordinary choices of traditional music, from soulful drumming to the final chilling vocals.

Director, screenwriter: Oday Rasheed
Producers: Majed Rasheed, Ally Tubis, Oday Rasheed
Cast: Azzam Ahmad, Alaa Najm, Abdul Jabbar Hassan, Tahseen Dahis, Hoda Shaheen, Ali Al-Karkhi
Cinematography: Basim Faihad
Editing: Hervé de Luze, Muhannad Rasheed
Music: Bryan Keller, Oday Rasheed
Sound design: Inanna Palikruschev
Venue: Amman International Film Festival (Arab Narrative Competition )
In Arabic
98 minutes

In this regard, this year’s theme “A World Unscripted” is particularly apt. As the festival president and co-founder Princess Rym Ali puts it, it’s “a theme that echoes the region’s current moment marked by uncertainty, upheaval, but also connection and possibility.”

In her warmly applauded address at the opening ceremony, Princess Rym identified “A World Unscripted” as “quite simply the world we live in.  A world that has gone off-script. But the filmmakers we have in our selection are the ones who contribute to bring it back on track.” She affirmed the festival’s role in providing a platform for stories that are often underrepresented, yet essential to the collective narrative of the Arab world, adding: “We refuse to allow our culture to die, even as engines of death and destruction fly above our heads.”

The other guiding force behind AIFF is its director and co-founder Nada Doumani. She got her start as a journalist in Switzerland (“a different life, a different me”). First as a newspaper reporter and then as a radio journalist, her job took her to the world’s hotspots: Iraq, Burundi, Kosovo, Sudan. When she came to Jordan to make a film on Iraqi exiles, it provided a natural transition into the world of film.

Regarding AIFF, “2020 was a terrible year to start a film festival”, Doumani admits. Originally scheduled to launch in April, which turned out to be the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic, the first edition was pushed to August 2020 when the situation was a mite better. There were still curfew restrictions at 10 p.m., which is prime festival time. But the main issue of how to screen films for live audiences was ingeniously solved, to the public’s general satisfaction, by showing festival films in a drive-in setting organized on three parking lots. Locals drove their own cars to the movies. There were no international guests that year, as the airport was closed.

Six years on, Jordan’s flagship film festival (there is also the Karama Human Rights Film Festival in December) continues to courageously take on challenges that would cow less seasoned organizers. Just weeks ago, Royal Jordanian Air Force jets were intercepting Iranian missiles and drones on their way to Israel, with air raid sirens warning the population they had the potential to fall within Jordanian airspace. Now Amman’s Queen Alia airport has reopened to commercial flights, though there is a visible drop in arriving passengers. Not surprisingly, the festival also experienced cancellations, but has held the line at a healthy 130 international attendees, a number Doumani finds very comfortable.

“The question was, is it decent to hold a festive event while all around us people are getting killed? Our reasoning is that the festival is a cultural event that promotes Arab cultural identity,” she told TFV, “which is exactly what is lost if events like this get canceled. These are our stories. These are the people who deserve our awards.”

As with all the other film events in the MENA region, war-torn Palestine casts a long shadow over normal festivities. The festival has canceled outer shows of pomp and glamour; ergo, no red carpet and no celebrations filled with music and dancing. Doumani, who attended one of the first Sarajevo film festivals held during the Bosnian war, notes a parallel with Amman’s support from its local population. “We Arabs support ourselves. Bombs may be killing people every day, but we shouldn’t let our culture die. If the airport had been closed this week, we would have done the festival anyway, for the people of Jordan.”

Among the 62 films being screened this year are six titles made on the ground in Gaza: The Mission, a harrowing story of surgeons working under horrific conditions in Gaza, and the new compilation film From Ground Zero +. A special selection of Irish classics fetes Ireland as this year’s Country of Honor, well-represented by the commanding figure of director Jim Sheridan. Prizes for Arab Narrative Films and Arab Documentaries will for the first time be joined by awards for a Non-Arab Films category, and an Industry section has been added.