Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters lead the nominations for the 8th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will be held during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.
Both features picked up seven nominations apiece for the awards, focused on Arab films that were produced and premiered outside of the Arab world in 2023. Overseen and run by the Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc), it was voted on by 209 critics from 72 countries and the winners will be announced during Cannes on May 18.
Scroll down for full list of nominations
This year’s nominees range from Sudan,...
Both features picked up seven nominations apiece for the awards, focused on Arab films that were produced and premiered outside of the Arab world in 2023. Overseen and run by the Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc), it was voted on by 209 critics from 72 countries and the winners will be announced during Cannes on May 18.
Scroll down for full list of nominations
This year’s nominees range from Sudan,...
- 4/25/2024
- ScreenDaily
‘Four Daughters’ & ‘Goodbye Julia’ Lead Nominations For 8th Edition Of Critics Awards For Arab Films
Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters and Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Lupita Nyong’o-EPed drama Goodbye Julia lead the nominations in the eighth edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.
Hybrid work Four Daughters, exploring the story of a real-life Tunisian mother who lost two of her daughters to Isis after they were radicalized by a local preacher, world premiered in Competition in Cannes last year.
The film won Cannes’ Golden Eye for Best Documentary and also went on to be nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Academy Awards.
Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia was also at Cannes in 2023, making history as the first Sudanese film to play in the festival across its 76 editions, with a debut in Un Certain Regard. It represented Sudan at in the 2023-24 Oscar race but was not nominated.
Set against the backdrop of the 2011 South Sudan Independence referendum,...
Hybrid work Four Daughters, exploring the story of a real-life Tunisian mother who lost two of her daughters to Isis after they were radicalized by a local preacher, world premiered in Competition in Cannes last year.
The film won Cannes’ Golden Eye for Best Documentary and also went on to be nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Academy Awards.
Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia was also at Cannes in 2023, making history as the first Sudanese film to play in the festival across its 76 editions, with a debut in Un Certain Regard. It represented Sudan at in the 2023-24 Oscar race but was not nominated.
Set against the backdrop of the 2011 South Sudan Independence referendum,...
- 4/25/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
In a lull for specialty openings early in the new year, three foreign-language films are taking a shot. The Settlers, winner of the Cannes Un Certain Regard Fipresci Prize, and Inshallah A Boy are Cannes alumns and Oscar submissions from, respectively, Chile and Jordan (neither short-listed in a competitive field). Driving Madeleine is a crowd pleasing French film.
The Settlers is a western presented by Mubi in limited release at the IFC Center/NY and Laemmle Royal/LA. The debut feature by writer-director Felipe Galvez is a frontier epic set at the turn of the 20th century as three horsemen set out across the Tierra del Fuego archipelago tasked with securing a wealthy landowner’s vast property. Accompanying a reckless British lieutenant and an American mercenary is mestizo marksman Segundo, who comes to realize their true mission is much darker. Stars Mark Stanley, Camillo Arancibia and Benjamin Westfall. Screenplay by Galvez and Antonia Girardi.
The Settlers is a western presented by Mubi in limited release at the IFC Center/NY and Laemmle Royal/LA. The debut feature by writer-director Felipe Galvez is a frontier epic set at the turn of the 20th century as three horsemen set out across the Tierra del Fuego archipelago tasked with securing a wealthy landowner’s vast property. Accompanying a reckless British lieutenant and an American mercenary is mestizo marksman Segundo, who comes to realize their true mission is much darker. Stars Mark Stanley, Camillo Arancibia and Benjamin Westfall. Screenplay by Galvez and Antonia Girardi.
- 1/12/2024
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
When a man dies, intones the leader of a women’s wake, the light goes from the home. Nawal (Mouna Hawa), who has woken to find her increasingly tired husband Adnan has died in the night, bows her head with her accustomed piety as her very existence is erased by this prolonged eulogy to the man who is gone.
She still is here caring for their daughter, working long hours in a wealthy house as a nurse to an elderly woman with advanced dementia and maintaining a welcoming home in the flat they bought and were paying off together, using her inheritance as a deposit. That life isn’t mentioned, however. Nawal’s primary duty is to “safeguard the reputation” of her husband by staying inside for four months and 10 days. And if that is impossible, not to be outside the house after dark. “The devils roam the world after sunset,...
She still is here caring for their daughter, working long hours in a wealthy house as a nurse to an elderly woman with advanced dementia and maintaining a welcoming home in the flat they bought and were paying off together, using her inheritance as a deposit. That life isn’t mentioned, however. Nawal’s primary duty is to “safeguard the reputation” of her husband by staying inside for four months and 10 days. And if that is impossible, not to be outside the house after dark. “The devils roam the world after sunset,...
- 12/15/2023
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
Italy, Scandinavia, Australia-New Zealand all jump in on the film.
Amjad Al Rasheed’s Jordanian drama Inshallah A Boy has sealed several additional territory deals ahead of its Arab premiere in the Red Sea Competition at Red Sea Film Festival today (Saturday December 2).
The film has sold to Italy (Satine), Scandinavia (Angel Film), Australia-New Zealand (Palace), Benelux (Arti film), Switzerland (Trigon), Eastern Europe (HBO Europe) and Indonesia (Falcon).
Greenwich Entertainment acquired US distribution rights on the film in August; the film had its world premiere in Critics’ Week at Cannes in May and North American launch at Toronto in September.
Amjad Al Rasheed’s Jordanian drama Inshallah A Boy has sealed several additional territory deals ahead of its Arab premiere in the Red Sea Competition at Red Sea Film Festival today (Saturday December 2).
The film has sold to Italy (Satine), Scandinavia (Angel Film), Australia-New Zealand (Palace), Benelux (Arti film), Switzerland (Trigon), Eastern Europe (HBO Europe) and Indonesia (Falcon).
Greenwich Entertainment acquired US distribution rights on the film in August; the film had its world premiere in Critics’ Week at Cannes in May and North American launch at Toronto in September.
- 12/2/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
At the memorial gathering for her husband Adnan, 30-year-old Nawal (a riveting Mouna Hawa) is offered many empty words of support and so-called comfort by friends and family. “When a woman loses her husband, she loses her lover, her partner, everything in her life,” clucks a commiserating neighbor. What she fails to mention is how much is not lost, but can, under the Jordanian legal system so scathingly exposed in Amjad Al Rasheed’s fluid, gripping “Inshallah a Boy,” be taken. Employment, home, child, dignity – all can be summarily stripped from a widow who has committed the grievous crime of never having borne a son.
Al Rasheed’s precision-tooled movie is a social-realist drama rendered as an escape thriller where the labyrinth that Nawal must navigate is the Jordanian social order itself, a massive bureaucratic, patriarchal maze designed to ensure that any woman trying to evade its clutches will batter...
Al Rasheed’s precision-tooled movie is a social-realist drama rendered as an escape thriller where the labyrinth that Nawal must navigate is the Jordanian social order itself, a massive bureaucratic, patriarchal maze designed to ensure that any woman trying to evade its clutches will batter...
- 10/7/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: Greenwich Entertainment has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Inshallah a Boy, the directorial debut of Amjad Al Rasheed which world premiered during the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week and is set to have its North American debut at TIFF next month.
Inshallah a Boy is being considered for Jordan’s Official Selection for Best International Feature Film and Greenwich will release the film in January.
The Imaginarium Films drama was co-written by Al Rasheed, Delphine Agut, and Rula Nasser. In the movie, after the sudden death of her husband, a widow fights for her inheritance to save her daughter and home. Inshallah a Boy examines a society where women are pressured to relinquish their property rights to male relatives and having a son would change everything.
“I’m beyond excited to collaborate with Greenwich on the upcoming theatrical release of my film,” said director Amjad al Rasheed.
Inshallah a Boy is being considered for Jordan’s Official Selection for Best International Feature Film and Greenwich will release the film in January.
The Imaginarium Films drama was co-written by Al Rasheed, Delphine Agut, and Rula Nasser. In the movie, after the sudden death of her husband, a widow fights for her inheritance to save her daughter and home. Inshallah a Boy examines a society where women are pressured to relinquish their property rights to male relatives and having a son would change everything.
“I’m beyond excited to collaborate with Greenwich on the upcoming theatrical release of my film,” said director Amjad al Rasheed.
- 8/21/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
In “Inshallah a Boy,” selected for Cannes’ Critics Week, women talk about sex and pregnancy. They also address misogyny and social injustice. But most of all, they say no.
“The main idea was to talk about a woman who refuses something that’s considered normal in her society,” points out director Amjad Al Rasheed, celebrating his feature debut.
In the Jordan-set film, Nawal (Mouna Hawa), after her husband’s sudden death, finds out that according to local inheritance law, and because she “only” gave birth to a daughter, his family might be entitled to everything she owns, including her home. Out of options, she pretends to be pregnant again.
Despite its Cannes premiere — and his previous win at Venice’s Final Cut — Al Rasheed remains cautious when discussing the film’s future reception at home.
“I can’t predict people’s reactions, but I am going to be honest: there...
“The main idea was to talk about a woman who refuses something that’s considered normal in her society,” points out director Amjad Al Rasheed, celebrating his feature debut.
In the Jordan-set film, Nawal (Mouna Hawa), after her husband’s sudden death, finds out that according to local inheritance law, and because she “only” gave birth to a daughter, his family might be entitled to everything she owns, including her home. Out of options, she pretends to be pregnant again.
Despite its Cannes premiere — and his previous win at Venice’s Final Cut — Al Rasheed remains cautious when discussing the film’s future reception at home.
“I can’t predict people’s reactions, but I am going to be honest: there...
- 5/18/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Laïla Marrakchi talks Atlas Workshops strawberry picker drama ‘La Más Dulce’
Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi broke out internationally in 2005 with debut feature and Cannes Un Certain Regard selection Marock, a Casablanca-set love story between a Jewish boy and Muslim girl, which she followed with the 2013 female-focused family drama Rock The Casbah.
The Paris-based, Casablanca- born director has not made a feature film in seven years, however, having become caught up in the high-end drama boom, taking directing credits on French language series Marseille, The Bureau, The Eddy and most recently L’Opera, set against France’s iconic Le Garnier Opera house.
Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi broke out internationally in 2005 with debut feature and Cannes Un Certain Regard selection Marock, a Casablanca-set love story between a Jewish boy and Muslim girl, which she followed with the 2013 female-focused family drama Rock The Casbah.
The Paris-based, Casablanca- born director has not made a feature film in seven years, however, having become caught up in the high-end drama boom, taking directing credits on French language series Marseille, The Bureau, The Eddy and most recently L’Opera, set against France’s iconic Le Garnier Opera house.
- 11/19/2021
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Michael Gentile’s Paris-based The Film, the banner behind Julie Delpy’s upcoming show “On the Verge,” is developing a string of projects with emerging filmmakers, notably Yaël Cojot-Goldberg’s “Farewell Caracas” and Mehdi Fikri’s drama “Et maintenant, le feu.”
The company is also producing Danielle Arbid’s “Des châteaux qui brûlent,” based on Arno Bertina’ book, and Delpy’s next French-language movie, “Les Barbares,” a culture clash film set in Brittany.
“Farewell Caracas,” co-written by Cojot-Goldberg and Thomas Vincent (the co-director of “Bodyguard”), is set in the 1970s in Venezuela and is a semi-autobiographical tale. The film revolves around French expats who move to Venezuela and will star Melanie Thierry (“In Therapy”), Arieh Worthalter (“Girl”) and Mathieu Amalric (“Sound of Metal”). It tells the story of the helmer’s parents whose love for one another got tested after her father, who was a well-established banker, spiralled out of control after discovering Klaus Barbie,...
The company is also producing Danielle Arbid’s “Des châteaux qui brûlent,” based on Arno Bertina’ book, and Delpy’s next French-language movie, “Les Barbares,” a culture clash film set in Brittany.
“Farewell Caracas,” co-written by Cojot-Goldberg and Thomas Vincent (the co-director of “Bodyguard”), is set in the 1970s in Venezuela and is a semi-autobiographical tale. The film revolves around French expats who move to Venezuela and will star Melanie Thierry (“In Therapy”), Arieh Worthalter (“Girl”) and Mathieu Amalric (“Sound of Metal”). It tells the story of the helmer’s parents whose love for one another got tested after her father, who was a well-established banker, spiralled out of control after discovering Klaus Barbie,...
- 7/11/2021
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
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