SAFAR Futures Open Call for Short Films

06 May '22

The SAFAR Film Festival is the only festival in the UK dedicated to cinema from the Arab world. Founded in 2012, SAFAR offers a unique space for audiences to explore and celebrate Arab cinema past, present, and future.

For SAFAR’s 10th anniversary edition, we are excited to announce an Open Call for short film submissions by UK based filmmakers who identify as Arab* and are aged 18-30.

The films will be carefully selected by SAFAR Future’s young programmers, a new mentorship programme for early-career Arab film programmers, and will be screened at the Barbican during SAFAR Film Festival (1-17 July).

This year SAFAR’s theme is The Stories We Tell which goes back to the essence of filmmaking: storytelling. Filmmakers are invited to highlight how they connect with this theme in their application.

The selected filmmakers will receive a small fee and will have the opportunity to travel to London to discuss their work at the screening.

Guidelines for applying:

  • The film cannot be longer than 25 minutes
  • You must be able to share a screener of the film online in HD
  • Filmmaker age group: 18-30
  • Filmmaker level: early career**
  • Filmmaker is UK based
  • Filmmaker is Arab-identifying*

Submit your film using the below form by 11:59pm on 20 May. We will let you know whether your film has been selected two weeks after the deadline.

*The Arab world is defined as the 22 countries who are members of The Arab League: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

We welcome applications from all people from or with heritage from these countries and cultures. While for some this may refer to nationality, for others the reference might be to identity and/or regionality.

Whether you are born in or recently migrated to the UK, we recognise that the way participants self-identify is complex and personal and we welcome applications from anyone who wants to be involved.

**We define an early-career filmmaker as anyone from a complete beginner working on their first film, to someone who has made any number of short films but no more than one feature-length film.