2021 Festival Awards
We're pleased to announce the awards given during the 2021 Toronto Arab Film Festival.
We've assembled an international team of jurors of filmmakers, writers, academics, and programmers, who will collectively select this year's award winners. View their profiles below.
- Jury Award for Most Promising Filmmaker: Suzannah Mirghani, Al-Sit
- Award for Best Canadian Short Film: Ines Guennaoui, Storm Child
- Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film: Suzannah Mirghani, Al-Sit
We've assembled an international team of jurors of filmmakers, writers, academics, and programmers, who will collectively select this year's award winners. View their profiles below.
Jury Award for Most Promising Filmmaker
Nehal El-Hadi is a writer, researcher and editor. She investigates the relationships between the body (racialised, gendered), place (urban, virtual), and technology (internet, health). She completed her Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Toronto, where her research examined the relationships between user-generated content and everyday public urban life. Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and is forthcoming in several anthologies and edited collections. Nehal is the Science+Technology Editor at The Conversation Canada, an academic news site, and Editor-in-Chief of Studio Magazine, a biannual print publication dedicated to contemporary craft and design.
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Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the 2018 curator of London's Safar Film Fest, a former member of Berlin Critics' Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. He co-authored various books on Arab cinema and has written for numerous outlets around the world, including Middle East Eye, Middle East Institute, BBC, Mubi, Verite, Al Monitor, Al Jazeera, and The National (U.A.E.). To date, his writings have been translated into six different languages. He is also a script consultant and has worked with various funds and producers in the Arab World and Europe.
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Walid El Khachab taught cinema at the Universities of Montreal and of Ottawa, and is currently Associate Professor and Coordinator of Arabic Studies at York University (Toronto). After writing a Ph.D. dissertation on Melodrama in Egypt, he focused his research on the Sacred in cinema and Middle Eastern cinemas. He has published fifty chapters and academic articles on cinema and pop culture, in Durham NC, Montreal, Cairo, Paris, and Istanbul.
He is currently a member of the editorial board of Al Film Journal based in Cairo. |
Award for Best Canadian Short Film
Maha Al-Saati is an independent, experimental filmmaker interested in exploring women’s stories in the Arab World. She is TIFF Filmmaker Lab 2020 and TIFF Writers' Studio 2021 Alum, and honorary recipient of the Share Her Journey Award and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) residency 2021. Her short films include Hair: The Story of Grass (18), an official selection of Fantastic Fest 2018, Slamdance 2019, and HollyShorts 2019; Cycle of Apples (19); and Fear: Audibly (17). Her feature project Hajj to Disney was selected for development by the Red Sea Lodge in partnership with TorinoFilmLab.
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Milada Kovacova started as a painter but now makes films and curates. She holds several degrees including a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. While studying at Concordia, she was awarded the Mel Hoppenheim Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement in the Film Production Program. Her films have shown locally and internationally.
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Anaïs Elboujdaïni is a reporter and the programming director for Vancouver’s MENA Film Festival. She lived and worked for 4 years in British Columbia and now is based in Québec, on Atikamekw traditional territories. She is interested in the dynamics of her indigenous identity as she is equal part Amazigh from Morocco and Québécoise. She coordinated a poetry contest for several years, produced short documentaries and won literary contests. Her interest in films stems from the idea that reality is diverse and that fiction is one of the deepest forms of travel.
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Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film
The Audience Choice Award will be announced on Monday, May 31, 12PM EST.