This year Tunisia is the guest of honour of the 9th International Malmo Arab Film Festival (MAFF) in Sweden. The country will also be represented by three film projects selected for the funding programmes of the MAAF Market Forum, which is held in parallel with the Festival from October 5th to 8th 2019.
22 film projects are competing for funding, either from the development or the post-production platform. Both are open to feature-length and short dramas and to documentaries. Development finance is allocated to support Arab film-makers, but also to encourage Arab-Scandinavian co-productions.
An Arab-Swedish co-production, Myriam Joobeur’s Motherhood, is on the feature film development platform. A co-production between Tunisia, Iraq and Denmark has been selected in the short film category: The Girl of the Mirror, by Egyptian director Mohamed Tawfik. Finally, a Franco-Tunisian co-production is on the post-production platform: Before it’s too late, a feature directed by Majdi Lakhdar and produced by Mohamed Ali Ben Hamra.
As a reminder, there are 5 feature films and 4 Tunisian short films in competition on the official MAFF programme, scheduled between October 4th and 8th in Malmo, Sweden. A Memorandum of Understanding between the MAFF and Tunisia’s Centre National pour le Cinema et l’Image (CNCI) has resulted in this specific programme dedicated to Tunisia.
As part of this Swedish celebration of contemporary Tunisian cinema there will be a series of cinematographic and cultural activities about the past, present and future of Tunisian cinema. The programme includes an exhibition of classic film posters and an extended conference on “Tunisian cinema between the past and the present”.
