The primary Muslim Worldwide Movie Competition (MIFF) ended this weekend in London with Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut characteristic Inshallah A Boy taking the most effective characteristic gong whereas veteran documentarian Asif Kapadia picked up the pageant’s honorary Trailblazer Award.
The pageant ran from Could thirtieth to June 2nd in London. The pageant was launched by producer Sajid Varda with a concentrate on highlighting worldwide Muslim tradition and religion by way of filmmakers of all backgrounds.
This 12 months’s competitors jury featured Claudia Yusef (Head of Improvement at BBC Movies), Leon Oteng (Manufacturing Inclusion Supervisor at BFI Filmmaking Fund), Neila Butt (Inventive Variety Lead, Nations and Areas at Channel 4), Tas Brooker (filmmaker, When We Converse), actor Youssef Kerkour (Channel 4’s Residence).
Accepting the most effective characteristic award, Rasheed stated: “I’m honored to be competing with these nice movies and successful Finest Function on the Muslim Worldwide Movie Competition. Thanks MIFF, thanks jury.”
Inshallah A Boy debuted within the Critics Week sidebar on the 2023 Cannes Movie Competition earlier than occurring to play a bunch of festivals, together with Crimson Sea, Bengaluru, and Thessaloniki. The very best brief award was nabbed by Elham Elhas’s BAFTA-nominated Yellow. The brief mission is described as a “poignant and visually wealthy” story a few lady in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan who buys her first full-body veil.
The Muslim Worldwide Movie Competition handed its inaugural Trailblazer Award to Asif Kapadia throughout its opening gala. Kapadia is an Academy Award, Grammy, and four-time BAFTA winner finest identified for his documentary options, together with Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona.
“A recurring theme in my work is my curiosity in exploring ‘outsiders’, those that could not conform or match into the ability programs round them,” Kapadia stated accepting the award. “Turning into a movie director, a author, a producer or certainly engaged on the crew within the movie business isn’t an apparent or easy alternative for somebody born in Hackney to working-class British Indian Muslim mother and father throughout the 70s.”
He added: “However I really feel fortunate that I discovered filmmaking. It modified my life. It’s a terrific honor to obtain the Trailblazer Award from the Muslim Worldwide Movie Competition, it’s essential to indicate that individuals from all faiths and backgrounds could be profitable and there ought to by no means be any boundaries or limits for what we will say, create, or categorical by way of our artwork.”
The Muslim Worldwide Movie Competition closed Sunday with a screening of Naqqash Khalid’s In Digital camera.
“Sharing this 12 months’s programme with cinema lovers in London has been a real privilege We’re already excited for our second version in 2025,” stated Varda.
Submissions for subsequent 12 months’s pageant are open.