The inaugural edition of Qumra, a new event by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), opened yesterday with more than 100 leading film industry professionals coming together for a series of bespoke mentorship labs, master classes, meetings and film screenings, to nurture regional talent.
“Qumra is about exchange of ideas, knowledge and inspiration,” DFI CEO Fatma al-Remaihi said, welcoming the delegates and marking the opening celebration.
Qumra provides a supportive and productive space to catalyse the works of new talents who will benefit from the experience and insights of the masters, she explained.
On the opening night, a screening of An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker was held. In attendance was its director Danis Tanovic, who won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for his first feature-length film, No Man’s Land.
Tanovic took part in a Q&A session with the audience following the screening. He is also one of the Qumra Masters, who will lead a Master Class at the event and participate in individual mentoring sessions with local and regional filmmakers.
The Qumra public screenings will also be attended by their directors, which provides emerging professionals and the public to engage in discussions with them on their creative process.
The opening celebration was attended by DFI’s chief administrative officer Abdulla al-Mosallam, artistic director and noted film director Elia Suleiman, who worked closely in developing the concept of Qumra, and Master Class moderator Richard Pena, who is a former programme director of the Film Society of Lincoln Centre and a professor of Professional Practice at the School of Arts at Columbia University.
Being held until Wednesday, Qumra will mentor 29 projects in various stages of production to take them to the next stage. Representatives from leading international film festivals, funding bodies, sales, production and distribution companies along with development specialists and script consultants are part of the delegates.
The public screenings, feature films by the Qumra Masters —Gael García Bernal, Leila Hatami, Cristian Mungiu, Abderrahmane Sissako and Danis Tanovic — alongside new voices in cinema selected from films supported by the Institute’s grants and co-financing programmes.
Today from 7.30pm to 9pm at Opera House in Katara Village, Qumra will host the public screenings of five short films that are part of the ‘New Voices in Cinema.’
The Forgotten (Syria/Qatar, 2012), directed by Ehab Tarabieh, is about a man who seeks to return to Golan Heights, his home, with the help of a smuggler.
Maqloubeh (Palestine, France, Egypt, Qatar; 2012) by Nicolas Damuni, is about five young men who make their own version of the traditional Palestinian meal but when they sit down to eat, are rudely interrupted.
Qatari film director Abdullah al-Mulla’s Old Airport Road (Qatar, 2014) is about a delusional and aimless man who wanders the city lost in imagination. Over the course of the day, his monologue provides an unintentionally sarcastic expose of the reality of being disconnected from family and friends.
Survival Visa (Tunisia, Qatar; 2014), directed by Nadia Rais, imagines a world in which paranoia begets a grotesque and drastic solution to an imagined threat.
The Wall (Lebanon, Qatar; 2012) by Odette Makhlouf Mouarkech, is an amusing portrait of a group of young people who become sort of a family, creating intense
camaraderie out of disaster.
Suleiman, al-Mosallam and Qumra Master Tanovic attend a ‘meet and greet’ reception at the inaugural edition of Qumra yesterday.
