FESTIVAL

Cannes winner Saeed Roustayi’s ‘Leila’s Brothers’ and Amil Shivji’s Toronto selection and Tanzanian Oscar submission ‘Tug of War’ will open and close the inaugural ceremony. Qisah International Film Festival in London. The festival aims to provide a platform for films from the Muslim world enabling filmmakers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to produce films exploring social changes in Muslim life. Qisah means stories in Arabic.

The first edition of the festival will feature 14 films that explore themes of family, resilience, patriarchy, secularism and religion, empowerment, anti-colonial politics, love across Muslim cultures as well as questions of aesthetics, politics and censorship. It is organized by academics Asad Ali and Phillippe Jalladeau who for more than 25 years led the Three Continents Festival In Nantes. Filmmaker Ahmed Jamal is director of the festival.

The festival will take place from 9-12 November at Kiln Cinema, Lyric Hammersmith and Rio Cinema and is supported by the BFI.

FUNDS

The annual Tasveer Film Festival Tasveer Film Fund will disburse a total of $50,000. During the festival, a live pitch event will determine the winners in each category, including Narrative Short ($10,000), LGBTQIA+ Narrative Short ($10,000), Documentary ($15,000) and Feature. narrative footage ($15,000). The judges for the live pitch event are Apoorva Bakshi, Bedatri A. Choudhury, Nina Chaudry, Bianca Harlow, Sheila Houlahan, Jasmine Jaisinghani, David Magdael, Devashish Makhija, Raj Raghavvan, Ameet Shukla and Soumya Sundaresh.

The festival, which takes place in Seattle from November 3-20, opens with Tribeca track “Four Samosas” and features Busan track “Goldfish” as its central gala. The fund winners will be revealed at the closing event after the premieres of the 2021 movie fund winners “Bepar”, “Dos Bros Force” and “Zindagi Dobara”.

CALL TO ACTION

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the death on set of british cinematographer Marc Milsome approaches on November 18, the Mark Milsome Foundation, the charity set up in his name, has called for an overdue cultural shift to protect crews working in the UK film and television industry.

The foundation calls on the industry establishment, including Bectu, Pact, PGGB and all industry guilds, to come together to create lasting change. In 2020 it commissioned a detailed survey to gauge opinion on their working conditions and then created a health and safety passport course in 2021. While individual crews responded positively to the course, with regards to the established industry, nothing has changed, says the foundation.