Artists Syndicate: Ongoing preparations for the Baghdad Arab Film Festival

INA - BAGHDAD 

The Iraqi Artists Syndicate announced its extensive technical and logistical preparations for the establishment of the Baghdad Arab Film Festival under the auspices of Prime Minister Muhammed S. Al-Sudani, to be held in Baghdad in December of this year.

"Baghdad will witness an artistic, cultural, and cinematic wedding through the establishment of the Baghdad Arab Film Festival in its first edition, organized by the Iraqi Artists Syndicate, in the presence of brilliant Arab artistic personalities," said the head of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate, Jabbar Judy, during the press conference organized by the syndicate in the presence of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, Qassim Al-Sudani, and a number of artistic personalities, as it was attended by the official Iraqi News Agency - INA. 

He added, "We influenced ourselves to launch the festival session in the name of the senior Iraqi producers, the artist, Muhammed Shukri Jamil," stressing that "the festival will be a good gesture to restore cinema activities, revitalize its wheels, activate and support Iraqi cinema, as well as enhance ways of joint Arab cinema production."

"The Iraqi prime minister's body was strongly supportive of the establishment of the Baghdad Arab Film Festival by agreeing to allocate an amount of 2 billion dinars to support the festival, as well as coordination and cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities represented by its minister, Dr. Ahmed Fakkak Al-Badrani," he highlighted.

Judy stressed that "the festival will include a competition for long Arab narrative films, a competition for short Arab narrative films, animation films, and documentaries. The first prize for feature films will be $10,000,000, the second prize will be $6,000,000, and the third prize will be $4,000,000."

He explained, "On the sidelines of the festival, there will be multiple artistic workshops in scriptwriting and film directing, as well as the main intellectual symposium of the festival, which will be entitled (Supporting Bad Joint Arab Film Production), in which a number of Arab artistic names will lecture, as well as the signing of a number of books."