Aan Korb - BBC Arabic Film and Documentary Festival

Reflecting the monumental changes in the Middle East and North Africa since the start of the uprisings in December 2010, BBC Arabic and the British Council are launching Aan Korb Film and Documentary Festival: Close Up Stories from the New Arab World with screenings, talks, debates and workshops.

Aan Korb (literally meaning ‘close-up’ in Arabic) will give an unprecedented platform in London to a generation that experienced events and in many cases risked their lives documenting them in the Middle East and North Africa. The Festival programme will include full length films and shorts, fiction and non-fiction, screening the work of professionals alongside citizen journalists armed with the everyday tools of mobile phones, hand-held cameras, social media, to document real, subjective stories.

The Festival will include extensive opportunities to meet film-makers and participate in discussions and debates around the topics raised in the films. The winner of the first BBC Arabic Young Journalist Award, open to young people aged 18-30, worth up to £10,000, including training, mentoring and equipment, will be announced on the final day of the Festival.

The Festival will open on 31 October with the first full-length screening of BBC Arabic’s new documentary Saudi’s Secret Uprising, made by Saudi journalist Safa AlAhmad. Gaining unprecedented access to the region, at great personal risk, AlAhmad’s extraordinary film gives a rare glimpse of the simmering unrest in Saudi’s Eastern Province.

Other programme highlights include:

The Dark Outside (2012) by Jordanian film-maker, Darin Sallam. It tells the story of a fictional character, Nina, a 12 year old girl who lives in a strict closed minded society, and has a phobia of darkness. Selected in the short films category at Cannes in 2013, this is the fourth short film made by Sallam. She is currently working on her first feature film project.

Though I Know the River is Dry (2013), is the first independent, crowd-sourced film in the post-revolutionary Arab world, made by Cairo based film-maker, producer and photographer Omar Robert Hamilton. Premiered in competition at the 2013 International Film Festival Rotterdam where it won the Prix UIP, it was nominated for Best Short Film at the European Film Awards and won Best Short at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

Just To Let You Know That I’m Alive (2013) directed by Italian journalist Simona Ghizzoni and photographer/film-maker, Emanuela Zuccalà, is a documentary about the Saharawi women of the Western Sahara, and their determined optimism in the face of oppression. The story of Western Sahara, the area south of Morocco, with an as yet undefined political status, is marked by a dark sequence of human rights violations including forced disappearances, torture, secret prisons, mass graves - and no trials.

In the short, A Farewell To Damascus, (2013) first-time film maker and award-winning Syrian artist, Azza Al-Hamwi, provides a platform for the outspoken views of Syrian actress, artist and activist, May Skaf, who has been detained a number of times due to her critical stance against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.