September 28, 2023

Announcing the 2023 Arab Film Festival Awards

by Lamia Abukhadra | in Film

Films selected to be part of the 2023 Arab Film Festival films are in the running to win juried awards for Best Documentary, Best Narrative, and Best Short Film as well as Audience Awards. Winners of the Audience and Jury Awards for Best Narrative and Documentary films win a $500 cash prize while the winners for the Best Short films win $200.

The Juried film awards for the 2023 Arab Film Festival have been announced! Audience Awards will be announced after the festival.

And the winners are…

Jury Awards

Best Narrative Feature: Under the Fig Trees by Erige Sehiri

Jury Statement: Quiet and subtle with deeply authentic performances, lovingly and beautifully shot, Under the Fig Trees is a bittersweet, compelling story of women coming of age and those who the society has deemed over their expiration date. Laboring to pick figs for a meager wage sets the stage for a complex exploration of relationships and aspirations of the workers. Rather than focusing on one graphic incident, sexual harassment and labor exploitation are woven into the everyday lives of both the young men and women picking the figs, and these issues intertwine with flirtations and confessions of love that the young women express, at times naively and other times with weary awareness that romance is not forever.

Narrative Feature Special Mention: Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo by Marya Zarif and André Kadi

Jury statement: Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo (2023, dir. Marya Zarif, André Kadi)Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo is a timely film focusing on the plight of those making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe at a time when most of the world’s attention has shifted away from this ongoing calamity. It is poignant and whimsical in equal measure, with the magical realist elements it employs well-woven through the narrative, as well as the strong family and neighborly bonds that transcend fear and displacement.

Narrative Film Jurors

Alia Yunis; Writer and Filmmaker (Abu Dhabi)

Joseph R. Farag; Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota (USA)

Best Documentary: R 21 AKA Restoring Solidarity by Mohannad Yaqubi

Jury statement: We were all very impressed by R 21. As the “twenty first film” of the Tokyo Reels, it reclaims, re-archives and re-contextualizes a little-known aspect of Japanese solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement. R21 combines careful edits of historical films collected by a group of Japanese activists, and contemporary footage from the process of its own making. With its subtle and rigorous composition, it offers a compelling method for activating the layered roles of film, and a reminder that solidarity stems from an understanding of the constant imperative to resist shared oppressions.

Documentary Film Jurors

Anaïs Farine; Researchers and Film Curator (France, Lebanon)

Andrea Shaker; Artist and Professor at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University (USA)

Omar Berrada; Writer, Translator, and Curator (Morocco, US)

Best Short Film: Les Chenilles by Michelle and Noel Kesserwany

Jury statement: It is an honor to present the 2023 Mizna short film award to LES CHENILLES, a beautiful film by Michelle and Noel Keserwany, featuring Masa Zaher and Noel Keserwany. 

We received 17 entries from Algeria, Palestine, Yemen, Kenya, Egypt, France, Canada, US, Qatar, Lebanon, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Portugal. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to watch these films, yet quite challenging to rank them, as they all are stunning and deserve recognition.

The jury unanimously selected Les Chenilles for this award because of the film’s complexity, its masterful storytelling, its beautiful cinematography, and the subtle yet effective manner by which the film weaves together the past and present of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, displacement, diaspora, and the fetishization of female bodies and labor with the affective intensities that are folded into friendships forged in unlikely places. We believe that the film does this masterfully and poetically through the itinerary of silk– a valued commodity that softly yet violently hinders historical exploits. The film gives the audience an opportunity to see through its intricate fabric the historical pain, resentment, betrayal, and joy—the joy of women’s solidarity and friendship. Telling a different story than the orientalist fantasies of the silk road, the film conjures memories of a past that is deeply entwined in the embodied gendered realities in diaspora, where silkworms, butterflies, and spiders weave ties of friendship and lean on each other for survival. Les Chenilles offers friendship as a way of life: a refusal to perish in the face of wars, economic devastation, sectarianism, and the alienation of exile. Congratulations to the filmmakers for capturing so much beauty in an artful and mesmerizing way, in less than 30 minutes!

Short Film Jurors

Joana Hadjithomas; Artist and Filmmaker (Lebanon)

Sima Shakhsari; Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota (US)

Audience Awards

Best Narrative Feature: Under the Fig Trees by Erige Sehiri

Best Documentary: Baghdad on Fire by Karrar Al-Azzawi

Best Short Film: VHS Tape Replaced by Maha Al-Saati