The Abu Dhabi Film Festival has announced the call for applications for the Festival’s SANAD grant which aims to support filmmakers from the Arab world. The deadline for receiving applications is the 6th April with a second intake of applications beginning on the 1st July.

The SANAD fund supports projects in the development or post-production phases across Arabic narrative and documentary feature-length films. Each year, SANAD awards a total of US$500,000 in grants to Arab filmmakers in two categories: development funds of up to US$20,000 and post-production funds of up to US$60,000 per project.

SANAD is a key element of the Film Festival. Presented by the Media Zone Authority - Abu Dhabi, the Festival contributes to the efforts to establish the Emirate as a regional creative hub through its focus on high quality, Arab cinema.

“The SANAD fund supports established and aspiring Arab filmmakers and helps them gain access to Arab and International festival audiences,” commented Ali Al Jabri, Festival Director. “In the past three years SANAD has received applications from more than 450 projects and has supported dozens of successful films, most of them being screened and winning numerous awards at the biggest festivals around the world.

Films supported by SANAD have featured in festivals like Cannes, Venice, Toronto as well as other major festivals around the world, highlighting the success of the Fund and its ability to support high quality films. The most recent examples of this are, ‘A World Not Ours’, ‘Coming Forth By Day’ and ‘When I Saw You’, all of which made it into the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in February. All three of these films won major awards at the 2012 edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and were the only Arab feature length films shown at Berlinale 2013.

SANAD grants may be awarded to producers and directors who are citizens of one of the following Arab countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Projects must be associated with a company producing in at least one of the listed countries.

Projects can be submitted for the first application cycle via the ADFF website: www.adff.ae/sanadfund.

For questions regarding entries email sanad@adff.ae or call +971 2 556 4000.

This year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival is the 7th edition and takes place from 24th October to 2nd November.

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