Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Al Remaihi has confirmed plans for a new film festival to be launched in the Qatari capital in November 2025, details of which will be unveiled in Cannes.
News that the DFI was planning a new film event surfaced last November during its Ajyal Youth Festival. Al Remaihi mentioned it during Ajal’s opening ceremony but she never spoke about it since then.
The new DFI event will take place during Ajyal’s customary November slot, which is a busy time on the Arab film festival circuit between Egypt’s El Gouna in October, Marrakech in late November and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival in December.
“We are very excited about the upcoming edition,” Al Remaihi told Variety. “We will have new programming elements in the festival, both for the industry and the filmmakers, and also for the broader audience,” she added before underlining that further details will be unveiled on the Croisette.
Ajyal, which has become a year-round program, will be partly incorporated into the new event.
As for what prompted this move, Al Remaihi noted that the DFI is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and the new film festival is an organic part of the evolution of the organization which runs an important film grants and workshop program that regularly spawns films selected by major festivals and has become a top MENA region film industry driver.
Al Remaihi spoke to Variety during the DFI’s ongoing Qumra event, an incubator and co-production market that helps foster first and second works, mostly by Arab directors, now at its 11th edition, where this year’s mentors include Johnnie To, Walter Salles and Darius Khondji.
Qumra was conceived by the DFI following the failure of the Tribeca Doha Film Festival which ran from 2009 until 2012.
The new festival will see the DFI “evolving into something that’s more needed for the industry, especially here in Doha, but also for the wider industry in the MENA region. So we are really excited about this,” she said. “We are really happy to unveil it because I know that a lot of people are asking questions.”
Two questions about the upcoming new DFI festival that have been swirling among attendees during Qumra is whether it will have an industry component and whether Qumra will be incorporated into the new fest.
“We don’t have any plans to change anything in Qumra,” she said. “We think it’s important for it to remain the way it is,” she added, further noting that “everything we do is part of an eco-system and is connected to the DFI,” Al Remaihi pointed out. At the same time, it appears clear that the new DFI event will indeed have a still unspecified industry aspect.
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