SANAD awards 10,000 Euros to Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania

• September 10, 2015
• Article

Abu Dhabi’s film fund, SANAD, today announced the winner of Best Arab Film at the Final Cut in Venice workshop, an initiative of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival that SANAD has partnered with to further support Arab filmmakers.

In addition to the title, Tunisian director, Kaouther Ben Hania was awarded SANAD’s €10,000 grant for her film “Zaineb Hates the Snow/ Zaineb Takrahou Ethelj” in support of the project’s post-production phase. Kaouther received two additional grants including a prize of up to €6,000 from Sub-Ti Ltd. in London for the production of a digital cinema package (DCP) master and Italian or English subtitles, as well as €5,000 for the purchase of two-year broadcasting rights by Rai Cinema. Amiens International Film Festival and Fribourg International Film Festival have both offered their support to participate in the production costs of a DCP master of Kaouther’s winning film.

SANAD funded film “Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim” by Sherif Elbendary (Egypt) was also awarded €10,000 of funding from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC) in Paris to be spent on post-production in France, an additional €10,000 from Knightworks to support visual and special effects, and a grant of up to €10,000 from Titra TVS in Paris for digital colour correction, the production of a DCP master, and French or English subtitles.

Two other participating projects in Final Cut were also successful in receiving support from various industry professionals and organisations and they are:

• “House in the Fields” by Tala Hadid (Morocco): received €15,000 from Laser Film in Rome for colour correction of up to 50 hours of work (technician included), in addition to a discount of €15,000 by Mactari Mixing Auditorium in Paris for sound mixing
• “Separation” by Hakar Abdulqadir  (Iraq): received support from MAD Solutions for the marketing, publicity and distribution of the film in the Arab World

The Final Cut in Venice workshop was created to support the post-production of films from Africa, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. To give budding Arab filmmakers the opportunity to complete their projects, the workshop presents the working copies of selected films to producers, buyers, distributors and film festival programmers to foster possible partnerships for co-production or access to the distribution market.