TAF awards offer a financial reward to winning filmmakers, along with a one-of-a-kind trophy designed by Habiba El-Sayed, a ceramic artist in Toronto. Habiba designed the award to incorporate traditional motifs and more modern aesthetics, landing on “traditional mashrabihya, which are Islamic privacy screens, using a wood finish and incorporating that with a more sleek look of mirror. In this case, the mirror represents the way filmmakers are reflected in the works they create, and the way they reflect the experiences of the world around them.”
Nakheel Jury Award for Best Feature Film
Winner: A Second Life//ڨدحة
Country: Tunisia
Director: Aniss Lassoued
Length: 92 mins
Synopsis: Gadeha (12) happens one day to be the victim of a car accident. He undergoes surgery. Penniless, his mother, Borkana, is helped by Malika and Moez, a benevolent couple that offers to pay for the hospital fees and provides the destitute family with a roof. Gadeha meets Oussama, Malika and Moez’s child (11) who is recovering from a kidney transplant. A strong friendship is made between the two boys. But Gadeha finds out haphazardly the secret of his family’s new standard of living. He is devastated.
Honourable Mention: Algerian Chronicles
Country: France
Director: Zak Kedzi
Length: 74 mins
Synopsis: Summer 2019, Zak wanders around the streets of Alger and dives into the Hirak, a series of protests happening in Algeria since February of that same year. His chronicles feed off encounters with men and women who observe through enlightened eyes their country and its struggles: through their words, the strength and complexity of such a movement takes shape.
Jury
Dima Toukan has over 20 years experience in the audio visual industry and is an award-winning creative producer. She has worked with a number of prominent TV networks, film production companies and media startups in the Middle East region. She currently works on projects in the capacity of creative consultant alongside developing content and film production. She is passionate about supporting aspiring filmmakers in realizing their unique and original stories.
Chafic Tabbara is a Lebanese Film critic, who writes for many newspapers and magazines. He writes weekly for «Alakhbar» Newspaper in Lebanon and periodically in «Alsahafa» Magazine (Al Jazeera). Since 2013 he has attended and covered Arab and international film festivals. He is a jury member of the annual «Arab critic award for European films» and «Arab Critic awards for Arab films»
Mervat Aksoy is a Jordanian producer who has worked on a variety of projects, both regional and international. She began working at The Royal Film Commission in 2003, which helped develop her passion for the local film industry. Originally a graphic designer, media production and content creation felt like a natural progression to her skills and interests. She graduated from the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in 2010 and since then has gone on to produce local film, television, and web content. Her notable projects include the award-winning narrative feature A 7 Hour Difference, part of the RFC EduFeature program, and two seasons of the Jordanian television and web comedy show Bath Bayakha. Since 2020, she has been working as a Development Producer for platforms based in the UAE.
Jury Award for Most Promising Filmmaker
Winner: Warsha//ورشة
Country: Lebanon
Director: Dania Bdeir
Length: 16 mins
Synopsis: A Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.
Jury
Kelly Lui is the Distribution Coordinator at Ouat Media, a Toronto-based distribution and sales company that specializes in short film. Recognized internationally as one of the world’s primary destinations for work by the industry’s rising stars, Ouat Media boasts an award-winning catalogue of titles featuring 12 Oscar® nominees including 3 Oscar® winners to date.
Kelly’s experience also includes festival programming, community arts facilitation, and multimedia art making. She has worked with Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival and is a co-founder of The Asian Canadian Living Archive (TACLA) collective.
Robert Abboud is an Audio-Visual Director (Film, TV, Immersive Experiences) with a demonstrated history of working in the media and entertainment industry for over a decade, including 4+ years in creative interactive education. He directed the highly acclaimed one-take film “A Cold Morning in November”, which was screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and awarded with the two best fiction awards from the Franco Arab Film Festival in Paris. Created visuals for VIPs like the Pope’s visit to Jordan, WEF, Doctors Without Borders, The Doctors TV Show – CBS, Al Jazeera America and UNIFOR Canada.
Nashwa Lina Khan is a community educator, facilitator, and researcher. She is also a writer and poet and occasionally dabbles in installation and archive that uses narrative methodologies. She holds a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University with areas of concentration focused on narrative methodologies, community and public health, refugee, and forced migration studies and is currently a PhD student at York University in Environment and Urban Change. Her work has been published in a variety of places including Vice, Rewire, This Magazine, and The New York Times. She is the host and producer of two podcasts, Muslim Rumspringa and Habibti Please.
Qayqub Jury Award for Best Canadian Short Film
Winner: Brown Bread & Apricots
Country: Jordan, Canada
Director: Serene Husni
Length: 8 mins
Synopsis: In the absence of his parents, an unruly teenager is presented with a crucial test of character devised by his eldest sister. Instead of being punished for skipping school, he is entrusted with managing the family allowance for two weeks. To feed his siblings, he resorts to something he knew in his heart: in a Palestinian house, the pantry is never bare. Borrowing from classic elements of Palestinian storytelling—namely repetition, trickery, and an obsession with food—Brown Bread & Apricots is a story about a Palestinian family in exile.
Jury
Toleen Touq is a curator, cultural producer and facilitator working between Toronto, Canada and Amman, Jordan. In Amman, she is co-founding director of Spring Sessions (2014-ongoing), a yearly residency program that brings together artists, researchers and cultural practitioners in a collaborative and experiential learning environment that is fueled by responsiveness to place and deep curiosity. She co-initiated and co-curated The River Has Two Banks (2012-2017), a multi-disciplinary artistic platform that addressed the historical, political and spatial relations between Jordan and Palestine. In Toronto, she is artistic director of SAVAC, a nomadic artist-run center dedicated to presenting and developing the work of marginalized artists on Turtle Island. In 2022, together with Liz Ikiriko, she initiated Ways of Attuning, a curatorial study group centered around nurturing generosity, collaboration, and imaginative thinking in curatorial practice. Her writings have been published with Sternberg Press, Ibraaz, A Prior, Manifesta Journal and others.
Nahed Mansour is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, programmer, and arts-administrator. She currently serves as the Curator of Programs and Education at the Gardiner Museum and.has previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, South Asian Visual Art Centre, and Mayworks Festival. She holds an MFA in Open Media from Concordia University and a BA joint Honours in Semiotics and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.
Yasmeen Nematt Alla (she/her) is an Egyptian immigrant and settler living in Tkaronto, Turtle Island (colonially known as Toronto, Ontario). She has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo and is an MFA candidate and a Gilbert Fellow at Cranbrook Academy of Arts. She has most recently exhibited at the Bronx River Art Centre in Bronx NY, Heaven Gallery in Chicago IL, and Xpace Cultural Centre in Toronto ON. She has previously been an artist resident in the Banff Centre, ACRE, STEPs Public Art, UKAI Projects, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, and is currently an artist resident at Ferment AI and HXOUSE Creative Think Tank. As an artist worker, she supports art organizations in creating accessible and anti-racist modes of communications in their day-to-day operations.
Yamama Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film
Winner: Galb’Echaouf//قلب الشوف
Country: Morocco
Director: Abdessamad El Montassir
Length: 18 mins
Synopsis: While investigating on an event that profoundly changed the landscape of the Occidental Sahara, the filmmaker was faced with a silent entourage and parents who are haunted by this harsh socio-political history. He consequently focuses his attention on the landscape and plants in order to find elements that could answer and help to reconstruct this amnesia.
Honourable Mention: Nightfall//الشفق
Country: France
Director: Roméo De Melo Martins
Length: 26 mins
Synopsis: On the 13th of July 2011, during a demonstration against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, the Syrian authorities arrest several intellectuals and artists. Among them, Ali Abou Georges, theater actor. After a night of interrogation, he is taken to the office of General Omar, the head of the Syrian intelligence service.