Emirati director Abdullah Hassan Ahmad has won the IWC Filmmaker Award for his film Sunrise walking away with $100,000 prize which will aid him in production of his script. Ahmad was awarded at a private gala on December 8, held in association with the 13th Dubai International Film Festival (Diff).
“There was strong competition this year. We really loved all the films,” Palestinian actor and jury member Ali Suliman told Gulf News tabloid!.
“You have creators who are truly working hard and the decisions we made were difficult.”
The IWC Filmmaker Award, presented by the luxury watch brand, is an annual funding prize that supports GCC filmmakers who are in the beginning stages of production on a film.
Other scripts competing this year were Salem by Emirati director Nujoom Ghanem, a story about adoption, love and youth in the UAE; and Search for the Star Pearl by Qatari director Nafiz Ali Ali, an animated ode to folklore and mythology centred around teenagers at sea.
Ahmad said earlier that his script started taking shape three years ago. “It’s about a family — a father, a mother and their son — and their three stories. They’re in a very Emirati environment, set during the day of the burial of martyrs,” he said.
In it, a father receives bad news about his son who is fighting a distant war, and struggles to share the information with his pregnant wife.
In 2013, Ahmad won the best film award as part of the Muhr Emirati category at Diff for Don’t Leave Me, a story about two girls — one losing her eyesight, one losing her memory — who share an unlikely connection.
“The films were really beautiful and very different. I discovered new things about the Gulf society — to me, that’s what I was looking for. I wanted to find out something new that I didn’t know about this society,” said jury member Suliman.
Suliman himself is no stranger to the region and recently worked on two Emirati productions, the psychological thriller Zinzana by Majid Al Ansari and the post-apocalyptic thriller The Worthy by Ali Mostafa, showing at Diff on December 12 (Vox, Mall of the Emirates, 6.15pm). For tickets and schedules, go to diff.ae.
