Amin Abbas Dubai

The UAE’s Sharjah Art Foundation has launched the third edition of its annual film festival, Sharjah Film Platform (SFP), providing a vital platform for emerging and established filmmakers nationally and internationally from 14 to 21 November 2020.

The third edition of the film event presents a line-up of film screenings online and in cinemas, including award-winning films as well as new and never-before-seen films. Alongside these screenings, SFP features public talks on contemporary topics in film and awards for the best documentary, experimental and narrative films.

Online screenings are hosted on the Foundation’s dedicated virtual festival platform that also present the extensive talks and workshops programme. This year, the Foundation is broadening Sharjah Film Platform programming with the launch of the Industry Hub, a new initiative that aims to support film production and distribution in the MENASA region.

This year’s edition of SFP features over 60 films from around the world including a Japanese film “Citizens of the Cosmos,” which is directed by Anton Vidokle is being among the movies programmes of SFP3. The movie based on the manifesto of Biocosmism written by Alexander Svyatogor in 1922 and it presents an imagined community voicing historical desires of Russian Cosmism—immortality, resurrection of the dead and interplanetism—in contemporary Japan. Using urban shrines, cemeteries, a crematorium, tatami rooms, a bamboo forest, an industrial gas plant and city streets as an open air stage, the movie narrates the text of the Biocosmist manifesto while presenting a sequence of dream-like tableaus.

It also includes the Middle East premieres of the acclaimed films The Shepherdess and The Seven Songs (2020) by Pushpendra Singh, winner of Best Director in the Young Cinema Competition, Hong Kong International Film Festival (2020); Eyimofe [This is My Desire] (2020) by Arie and Chuko Esiri, which earned a Best First Feature nomination at the Berlin International Film Festival (2020); and Epicentro (2020) by Hubert Sauper, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival (2020).

In addition to the screenings, Sharjah Film Platform offers a rich online programme of talks, panel discussions and conversations led by renowned filmmakers, artists and film industry professionals—all of which are free to the public—as well as an exciting programme of entertaining workshops aimed at children interested in motion picture and moving-image arts.

For the occasion of SFP3, Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation said:” There is an exceptional community of filmmakers in the UAE and the surrounding region, and through the establishment of Sharjah Film Platform in 2018, we aimed to build on SAF’s longstanding support for filmmakers and help bring their work to wider international audiences”.

“The substantial developments happening this year—the inclusion of an online screening component for the festival and the launch of the SFP Industry Hub—allow us to build on our commitment to film by bringing the work of incredible filmmakers from the region straight into the homes of viewers around the world and by creating new infrastructure to support emerging filmmakers and lay the groundwork for more risk-taking, experimental and exceptional films in the years to come,” she added.

SFP 3 will have COVID-19 safety protocols in terms of mask mandatory, social distancing and limited seats in cinema screens, tickets are available on the festival’s online platform and at the box office in all the screening venues.

For online screening, the movies are available to stream on demand the day after they are screened in cinemas. Free to attend, talks and workshops can also be accessed through the same virtual platform; however, advance registration is required.

For more information, visit sharjahart.org.