Manama: Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) will this year feature 168 films.
The festival, in its eighth edition will, be held on April 19-24 in the Qatari capital, Doha.
The selection includes 46 short featured documentaries, 66 mid-length and 28 long featured ones, in addition to 19 films of the "New horizon films" genre, and nine of the "Promising films" genre, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.
The 18 TV stations taking part in the annual festival will present 23 films.
The Jury Committee is made up of 15 members from China, Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Russia, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Poland and Turkey.
Al Jazeera festival was launched in April 2005 under the name of "Al Jazeera Television Production Festival" and it included the work of 14 Arab countries that featured documentaries, social and news programmes.
The second edition built on the success of the first one and received a large number of participation requests from Arab and non-Arab countries.
The third edition added three films categories - long, short, and mid-length - to its competitions as well as the "New Horizon" film category for aspiring filmmakers and talented students.
Sponsors provided a special award at the fourth edition to promote works addressing particular issues, namely, family and children issues, the Palestinian issue and freedom and human rights issues.
The sixth edition presented a number of films to the public while the seventh edition, discussed film industry-related issues, challenges and ways for improvement, QNA said.
Doha-based Al Jazeera was launched in November 1995 as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel.
The broadcaster has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in several languages languages.
