Sharjah Film Platform 7 award winners announced by SAF

The seventh edition of Sharjah Film Platform (SFP) took place November 15 to 24 at the Mirage City Cinema, the open-air theatre in Sharjah’s historical quarter, and VOX Cinemas, City Centre Al Zahia. Presented in parallel with the film screenings, a series of public programmes provided opportunities for learning and gathering. This year’s programme focused on ideas of modernity in African and Asian film, cinema as resistance and resilience from Palestine and beyond, as well as innovations in documentary filmmaking. Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), which hosts the Platform, has announced the winners of Sharjah Film Platform Awards in four categories, based on genre and length: Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Fiction Feature and Fiction Short. This year, the films in the competition section were nominated by an international committee of filmmakers. The selection featured a wide range of films from different parts of the world, including Myanmar, Bhutan, Rwanda, Nigeria, Colombia, Bahrain and Palestine.

The films featured in the festival were then evaluated by an international jury that selected the Sharjah Film Platform Award winners. The jury members included Fadi Haddad, Associate Professor of Digital Production and Storytelling, American University in Dubai; Katia Jarjoura, Filmmaker and Middle East specialist; Sarah Trad, Co-Director of Programming for the MENA Film Festival in Vancouver; Youssef Shazli, Co-founder and Director of Zawya Cinema; Zeina Shanaah, Head of Development at Alamiya Filmed Entertainment; and Nezar Andary, filmmaker, academic and curator.

SFP Awardees are — Best Documentary Feature Film: Coconut Head Generation (2023), Director: Alain Kassanda, France, Nigeria
89 Minutes. Every Thursday, a group of students from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria organises a film club, transforming a small lecture hall into a political agora. Reclaiming the expression ‘coconut head generation’, a derisive term for stubborn and brainless youth, the film shows how a group of students assert their right to intellectual freedom, while honing their critical voice.

Sohail Dahdal in conversation with Flavia Mazzarino, SFP 7.

Best Documentary Short Film: Surveilling A Crime Scene (2024), Director: Alana Hunt, Australia
22 Minutes. Shot on Super 8mm film, the film examines the lives of non-indigenous people in Miriwoong Country in northwest Australia to frame colonisation as not only a historical phenomenon, but also a continuous and present violence. Weaving connections between various subjects – a dam, a historical monument, agriculture, tourism, a police station, tortured bodies and bureaucracy – the movie lays bare the tools and techniques of power and oppression. Honourable Mention Documentary Feature Film: From Ground Zero (2024), Supervisor: Rashid Masharawi, Palestine, United Arab Emirates
113 minutes. From Ground Zero is a project led by Rashid Masharawi. It amplifies the voices of Gaza, providing a platform for cinematographic expression in the horrific context of an ongoing war. The hour-long feature, comprising 22 short films of various genres, explores everyday life through drama, comedy, literature, painting, music and animation. The films, each three to six minutes long, reflect the vitality of the art scene in the Gaza Strip, in spite of all odds. Despite the harsh filming conditions, spoken about by Masharawi in a discussion following the award ceremony, Gaza’s vibrant artistic scene shines through the collection, offering an intimate and powerful portrait of daily life and the enduring spirit of its people.
Best Fiction Feature Film: Cu Li Never Cries (2024), Director: Phạm Ngọc Lân, Vietnam, Singapore, France, Philippines, Norway 92 minutes.

After picking up the ashes of her estranged husband from Germany, Mrs. Nguyen travels back to Hanoi with Cu Li, his pet pygmy slow loris, a primate native to the Vietnamese rain forest. The film weaves together the present moment with the complex echoes of Vietnamese history by interspersing an old woman’s longing for the past with a young couple’s uncertain future.

Best Fiction Short Film: Upshot (2024), Director: Maha Haj, Palestine, Italy, France
34 minutes. After suffering unimaginable loss, Suleiman and Lubna retreat to an isolated farm, where they tend to their crops and engage in impassioned debates about their five children’s life choices. One day a stranger arrives to reveal a harrowing truth from their past. Honourable Mention Fiction Feature Film: Oasis of Now (2023), Director: Chia Chee Sum, Malaysia, Singapore, France
90 minutes. In this film, a woman meets up with her daughter in a stairwell of an old Kuala Lumpur apartment complex. Taking refuge on a nearly abandoned floor, they play simple games and make the most of their secret time together before each must return to their home in the same complex. But in these stolen moments when dreams and reality elide, nothing is quite what it seems.

Also part of this year’s Platform, the Sharjah Film Platform Feature Fund will award up to Dhs500,000 to one UAE-based scriptwriter, director or lead/executive producer for the completion of an English- or Arabic-language narrative feature currently under production. Formerly the Pitching Forum, the strengthened fund will provide more comprehensive and robust support to filmmakers in the country. The deadline to submit the application is 11:59 pm (UAE time) on February 28, 2025.

SFP is an annual festival of independent cinema and experimental filmmaking where audiences can discover new approaches to film and art. The 10-day event — which includes a range of regional and international films, talks by filmmakers and industry professionals, workshops and gatherings — is centered around Mirage City Cinema. SFP foregrounds recent cinematic achievements by international filmmakers and artists, noteworthy classics from around the region and experimental films that challenge the idea of what film practice is today.