The 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival concluded with the top prize, the Golden Pyramid Award, going to Bogdan Mureșanu’s “The New Year That Never Came.” The black comedy, which previously won the Horizons sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, is set in 1989 during the festive season that immediately precedes the downfall of […]

Mohamed Subahi’s documentary “Madaniya” captures an uprising that would lead to the toppling of Omar Al-Bashir’s 30-year rule in Sudan. These months of protest are told through the perspectives of participants in a sit-in organized in front of the Central Command of the Army in Khartoum. “I choose my characters as normal people,” Subahi tells […]

Maciej J. Drygas’ “Trains” won Best Film in the International Competition at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, with Miguel Coyula’s “Chronicles of the Absurd” taking the Best Film in the Envision Competition.  “Trains” is a journey through the 20th century told entirely through archival footage. The jury of the International Competition, comprising Juliana […]

“Spring Came on Laughing,” the only Egyptian film in competition at the Cairo Film Festival, is the debut feature of Noha Adel. It is rich in music and messy, full of noisy life, taking the form of a series of conversations between women where a drama rapidly escalates into a jumble of tragedy and dark […]

In a modern world where work creeps further and further into one’s personal life, eating away at time and energy alike, it is a familiar feeling to realize you don’t have as much time as you would like for a partner. Chinese director Chouwa Liang currently feels that pressure, although her partner’s notion of time […]

Dutch documentarians Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch are veterans on their home turf of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — where they won Best Dutch Film in 2014 and 2022 — but this year brought a career highlight for the renowned duo: introducing their latest doc “All Is Well” at the beautiful Tuschinski cinema […]

“Dry Sky,” produced by Ibrahim Omar, won the Forum Award for Best Pitch Wednesday at IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam. “Do You Love Me,” produced by Lana Y. Daher, took home the Forum Award for Best Rough Cut, and “Looking for the Mermaid” by Yara Costa won the Producers Connection Award. The DocLab Forum Award […]

Ignorance is bliss, according to Nicolas Philibert, director of BAFTA nominee “To Be and to Have” and Berlin best film winner “On the Adamant,” discussing his approach to documentary filmmaking at IDFA in Amsterdam. The French filmmaker, whose recent films “The Typewriter and Other Headaches” and “Averroès & Rosa Parks” both screen at IDFA this […]

Documentary filmmakers and industry leaders gathered at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam to discuss “independence and resistance in times of repressive populism” at the festival’s yearly Europe Conference in partnership with French public broadcaster Arte. IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia introduced the conference by highlighting the “rising success” of populist movements in Europe […]

It’s been 10 months since “Sugarcane” first premiered at Sundance, where it picked up the Directing Award: U.S. for documentary. Since then, directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat have landed a worldwide distribution deal with National Geographic Documentary Films and have traveled across the world with their film, now stopping at the International Documentary […]

Following a two-hour masterclass at the Cairo Film Festival, Gaspar Noé spoke with Variety about future genres he’d like to tackle: “The main film genres that really would interest me for a future project are documentary, war film, and horror. Probably I should even try to mix those three genres. I also would like to […]

Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, whose “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” won an award for cinematic innovation at Sundance, mused on the significance of the “symbolic act” during a talk at documentary festival IDFA on Sunday. Speaking in the art-deco splendor of Amsterdam’s Tuschinski movie theater, Grimonprez started with an extract from his film “Shadow World,” […]

After premiering “Terrestrial Verses” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, Iranian director Ali Asgari returned home to Tehran to find out he was banned from traveling for eight months, as well as having his personal belongings confiscated by the government authorities for weeks. The result of that period of uncertainty and introspection is the […]

The Red Sea Fund—the financing arm of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Foundation—was created in 2019 to support emerging filmmakers and established talent from the Arab world and Africa. In the five years since, the fund has supported over 230 films from more than 40 countries, including Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated “Four Daughters” and Saudi […]

With growing expert crews, eye-watering tax incentives and staggering locations, the Middle East is currently a bubbling cauldron of activity for film shoots. From Hollywood blockbusters like Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” to regional epics like “Hajjan,” productions are making the most of the geographical diversity of the sprawling region while film commissions and studios […]

Here’s Variety‘s guide to film commissions, facilities and production incentives in the Middle East and North Africa and some of the films that have taken advantage of them. Jordan Film CommissionOne of the most popular Middle East locations due to its diverse landscape and highly experienced crews, Jordan recently opened its first dedicated film studio […]

Four years after its launch, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival has a lot to celebrate. The ambitious event, which is Saudi’s first full-fledged film festival and market, has rapidly become the region’s main movie industry hub and films supported by its Red Sea Fund have fared nicely this year, with Tunisian director Kaouther Ben […]

Taskovski Films Sales has acquired Miguel Calderón’s “Loss Adjustment,” ahead of its international premiere in the Envision Competition at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film follows Pedro, a loss adjuster, who travels across Mexico investigating the causes of major catastrophes while dealing with corrupt “scavengers” who profit from human tragedy. To escape the depravity […]

Romanian director Radu Jude thinks it’s time for filmmakers to start taking TikTok seriously. During an in-conversation event at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Jude pulled out his smartphone and showed a series of TikToks to the audience, saying, “To me, TikTok is like the beginning of cinema. It’s like Lumiére. Filmmakers are in […]