Latest in Qumra

Qatar's Doha Film Institute (DFI) has announced that Leos Carax, Claire Denis, Atom Egoyan, Martín Hernández and Jim Sheridan will serve as Qumra Masters at the 10th edition of its respected talent incubator event, running from March 1 to 6. They join a long list of top professionals to have…

The Middle East and North Africa region’s cinema star is rising across every aspect of the chain from production to exhibition to streaming. Fresh energy has been injected into the sector by the arrival of Saudi Arabia on the scene following the lifting of its cinema ban in 2017 as part of its 2030…

Lamia Chraibi is one of Morocco's best-known indie film producers whose credits include Mica, about a boy from the slums who is discovered to have a talent for tennis, and Sitges prize-winning horror Achoura as well as co-producing 2016 Cannes Critics' Week winner Las Mimosas. The Franco-Moroccan…

The Doha Film Institute's Qumra talent and project incubator event returned as a 100% in-person event last week, bringing participants together face-to-face in Doha for the first time since it was forced online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. "It's been great to have everyone back gain. I keep…

UK director Lynne Ramsay enjoyed international recognition early on in her career after short films Small Deaths and Gasman were invited to the Cannes and won the Jury Prize in its short film competition in 1996 and 1998 respectively. "That was the first film festival I went to. It was so…

Jacqueline West is one of Hollywood's most respected costume designers with four Oscar nominations for Philip Kaufmann's Quills, David Fincher's The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant and Denis Villeneuve's Dune. She is also Terrence Malick's go-to costume designer…

Oscar-winning UK producer David Parfitt shared insights from the highs and lows of his 35-year producing career at a masterclass for the Doha Film Institute's Qumra talent incubator over the weekend. "I have been staggeringly lucky," said Parfitt, who won an Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love with…

Oscar-winning screenwriter, playwright and film director Christopher Hampton was on feisty form in a masterclass in Qatar earlier this week as part of the Doha Film Institute's Qumra talent incubator event (March 10-16). Hampton, who won Academy Awards for the screenplays of Dangerous Liaisons and Th…

UK director Michael Winterbottom has suggested that his 2022 Gaza documentary Eleven Days In May had a tougher time securing a UK broadcast partner following an article in the London-based Jewish Chronicle linking his Palestinian co-director to Hamas. The Kate Winslet-narrated documentary Eleven Days…

Oscar-winning writer Christopher Hampton is in talks to write a screenplay with French director Anne Fontaine about iconic feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nelson Algren's transatlantic affair. The playwright and screenwriter, who has won Oscars for The Father…

UK director Lynne Ramsay has given updates on a raft of projects she has on the boil, including her fresh collaboration with Joaquin Phoenix, on the fringes of the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra talent incubator this weekend. She revealed that her adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s short story Stone Mattres…

Playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, producer David Parfitt, Dune costume designer Jacqueline West and directors Lynne Ramsay and Michael Winterbottom are to set attend the Qatari Doha Film Institute's ninth talent incubator event Qumra in March. The meeting, which returns as an in-person…