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Directors From The AsiaAfrica Region Compete
For Prize Funds US$575,000 In 25 Categories
Of The DIFF Muhr AsiaAfrica Awards 2012

San Zimei - Three Sisters
  
The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) has unveiled its lineup of films for its Muhr AsiaAfrica Awards, now in their seventh year. The Muhr Award offers prizes of USD 50,000 for Best Feature Film and USD 40,000 for Best Film and the Special Jury Prize.

"The Muhr AsiaAfrica program always offers fresh, unconventional and exciting cinema that would be otherwise hard to access in the region, and this year is a bumper crop," said Nashen Moodley, DIFF's Director of AsiaAfrica Programmes. "DIFF audiences and cinema lovers will get to see an abundance of genre-bending stories that challenge what is known about these two vast regions, from some of the best working directors out there as well as up and coming first timers. If you are looking to engage with some unique perspectives on the world today, the Muhr AsiaAfrica films will not disappoint."

Many of the films included in the line-up of the Muhr Awards have already received industry awards. Filipino director Brillante Mendoza, who has directed 16 award-winning films since 2005, returns to DIFF with his new film Thy Womb, following his Muhr Best Film win for 2009's Lola.

Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Artistic Director of DIFF said: "Our AsiaAfrica program is extremely important and close to our hearts, and every year through our Muhr Awards we honor the talent of Asian and African filmmakers. We are dedicated to bringing audiences fascinating films, that would be otherwise hard to access in the region and a chance to engage with the filmmakers to understand and appreciate the richness of African and Asian filmmaking."

The Muhr AsiaAfrica awards were established in 2006, along with the Muhr Arab awards. Both honors were instituted to promote cinema from areas outside of the traditional film industry centers, enriching international artistic and culture output in line with DIFF's mandate of bridging cultures. Each year, the festival awards prize money of more than USD 575,000 in 25 categories.

Muhr AsiaAfrica honors will go to Best Feature Film (USD 50,000), Special Jury Prize (USD 40,000), Best Director (USD 15,000), Best Actor (USD 8,000), Best Actress (USD 8,000). In the Documentary Films category, prizes are: Best Film (USD 40,000), Special Jury Prize (USD 30,000), and Best Director (USD 15,000).

The full Muhr Award lineup include:
• First-time director Hussayin Tabak's Your Beauty is Worth Nothing explores the life of a sensitive Turkish boy living as a refugee in modern-day Vienna with quiet charm.
• Award-winning Iranian director Vahid Vakilifar's second feature Taboor is a dystopic road movie that follows a motorcyclist of fragile health on a mission crisscrossing the far flung streets of Tehran.
• Pioneering Danish-Afghan documentary My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden provides insight into the joys and sorrows associated with living in the shadow of war.
• Famed Chinese documentarian, Wang Bing's, Venice Film Festival Orizzonti award-winning San Zimei - Three Sisters, follows three motherless girls as they eke out their living on a remote farm.
• From Turkey, Zeki Demirkubuz will show Inside, his own take on Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, a gritty portrait of a loathed outsider in Istanbul.
• Filipino director and DIFF veteran Brillante Mendoza returns with Thy Womb, the story of an elderly woman who will stop at nothing to give her husband a child.
• Representing Africa, Angolan director Zeze Gomboa's funny, slick second feature The Great Kilapy tells the story of a crooked but lovable con artist who swindles the Portuguese colonial government of Angola right before independence, emerging as a national folk hero.
• French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis' third feature Today follows Satché, a man who has been marked to die for mysterious reasons, on his surreal last day on earth.
• Singaporean directors James Leong and Lynn Lee bring The Great North Korean Picture Show, an unprecedented look at the domestic film industry in this highly secretive nation.
• From Iran, four of the country's well-known filmmakers contribute to the omnibus documentary Kahrizak, Four Views, which delves into aging, loss and memory in the context of a famous nursing home for the elderly.

About DIFF
The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is the leading film festival in the Middle East and Africa. Since its inception in 2004, the festival has served as an influential platform for Arab filmmakers and talent at an international level, by spearheading the cinema movement in the region. The 9th edition of DIFF is set to take place between December 9 – 16, 2012.

The Investment Corporation of Dubai is the title sponsor of the Dubai International Film Festival and is held in association with Dubai Studio City. Dubai Duty Free, Emirates Airline and Madinat Jumeirah, home to the Dubai International Film Festival, are the principal sponsors of DIFF. The Festival is supported by the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award.


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