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Arab Film Fest 2019 Juried + Audience Awards

Announcing the Juried + Audience award winning films from the 14th Annual Twin Cities Arab Film Fest. See below for the best narrative features, best documentary features, and best short films. Thank you to all who participated voting for the audience awards this year!

Juried Award Winners 2019

Best Narrative Feature:
It Must Be Heaven

Elia Suleiman / 97 min / 2019 / France, Qatar, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Palestine
E.S. escapes from Palestine seeking an alternative homeland, only to find that Palestine is trailing behind him. The promise of a new life turns into a comedy of errors: however far he travels, from Paris to New York, something always reminds him of home.

Best Doc. Feature:
Bezness as Usual

Alex Pitstra /92 min / 2016 / Netherlands + Tunisia
Filmmaker Alex Pitstra has lived his life pulled between cultures. Raised in Holland by his mother, Anneke, he longed to know more about Mohsen, his absent Tunisian father. He attempts to get to know his father, make sense of his roots, and bridge his own personal cultural divide.

Best Short Film:
Manivelle: The Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow

Fadi Baki / 29 min / 2017 / Lebanon
A young filmmaker investigates the legend of Manivelle, an automaton gifted to Lebanon in 1945 that still haunts an abandoned mansion in Beirut. After being coaxed back out into the limelight, the people who knew him come forward to speak their mind, and the myth that Manivelle has constructed around himself starts to unravel.

Audience Award Winners 2019

Best Narrative Feature:
It Must Be Heaven

Elia Suleiman / 97 min / 2019 / France, Qatar, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Palestine
E.S. escapes from Palestine seeking an alternative homeland, only to find that Palestine is trailing behind him. The promise of a new life turns into a comedy of errors: however far he travels, from Paris to New York, something always reminds him of home.

Best Documentary Feature:
Tiny Souls

Dina Naser / 86 mins / 2019 / Jordan / US premiere
Marwa, her mother, and her siblings are stranded in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp after escaping war in Syria in 2012. Four months into camp life, Marwa is beginning to expect that they will stay there only for another week, maybe two. Over the ensuing four years, the director follows Marwaʼs everyday life in the camp, where she blossoms from a child to a young woman.

Best Short Film:
Brothers

Mike Mosallam / 8 min / 2018 / US / MN premiere
A Muslim Arab boy realizes he is different and is fortunate to have an older brother who encourages him to be himself in the face of bias and adversity. Brothers sheds light on LGBT-oppression in a familial, religious space.


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