Director of Best Arab Documentary Film The Virgin, The Copts and Me (La Vierge, Les Coptes et Moi) Namir Abdel Messeeh
By Peter Townson/Staff Reporter
As the Doha Tribeca Film Festival drew to a close last night, a number of awards were presented to films in the Arab Film competition, with prize money worth over $300,000 being provided to filmmakers to help nurture their development and inspire further success.
This year’s Arab Documentary Competition was decided by a jury led by documentary maker, Nick Broomfield, whose team decided that the Best Arab Documentary Film at DTFF 2011, and winner of the $100,000 prize was The Virgin, The Copts and Me, directed by Namir Abdel Messeeh.
Messeeh said: “This movie speaks about religion. I found a passionate audience here for my film, although I was initially afraid to screen it here.”
“I realised here in Doha that love is stronger than fear, and I hope that the film can screen in Egypt and that people there will realise it is not about division,” added the director.
Director of Best Arab Narrative Film Normal speaks on stage with the cast of the film behind him
He also thanked the Minister of Culture, HE Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kuwari, who took him on his first cinema trip as a child when his mother worked at the Qatari embassy in France.
The Best Arab Documentary Filmmaker award and $50,000 was won by Rania Stephan for The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni. The Arab Narrative Feature competition’s jury was headed up by Mohamed Malas, and this year, the award for the best Arab Narrative Film and a prize worth $100,000 went to Merzak Allouache’s film Normal inspired by recent events during the Arab Spring. “I would like to seize this opportunity to express my support to the democratic people and their struggle,” said Allouache, adding “the DTFF helped us to complete this film, and without their assistance, the film would be stuck in a box. I hope the film can be screened in Algeria and that it can help to change the way things are expressed there.”
The award for Best Arab Narrative Filmmaker and $50,000 was presented to the director of Omar Killed Me, Roschdy Zem, and Sami Bouajila also won the award for Best Performance and $15,000 for his role in the film.
Best Arab Documentary Filmmaker winner Rania Stephan for ‘The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (Ikhtifa’aat Hosni Alt-Thalathat
The Best Arab Short Film award and $10,000 was won by the film, Where Are You? (Wenak?) directed by Abdullaziz al-Nujaym, with an honourable mention for My Father is Still a Communist – Intimate Secrets To Be Published, by Ahmad Ghossein, which won $10,000 in development services. And for the first time at the festival, an award was presented under the category of ‘Made in Qatar,’ which saw Mohamed Rezwan al-Islam and Jassim al-Romaihi presented with a DFI engraved iPad for their film, A Falcon, A Revolution.Executive director of DFI, Amanda Palmer said: “There are so many prestigious filmmakers here, and the reason we have the festival is to discover new talent - we hope these talented people meet each other here and are able to make films together as a result.”

Antonio Banderas (left) and Omar Sharif award top honours at the DTFF Arab Film Competition awards ceremony

Jury president, Malas said: “This is one of the best festivals to raise the profile of youth cinema, which will create our future.”
Fellow president, Broomfield noted: “We’ve enjoyed watching a variety of different films. These filmmakers make it look deceptively easy, but taking unstructured reality and making it personal is a difficult thing to do.”