TenDoha Film Institute Films Are picked for Cannes Film Festival 2022

With an excellent slate of 10 projects funded by the region's leading film organization selected for the famous Cannes Film Festival 2022, the Doha Film Institute (DFI) has achieved yet another milestone.

With one of the largest presences at Cannes 2022, which runs from May 17 to 28, the Institute continues its distinguished tradition of sponsoring captivating pictures from around the world that generate headlines in the international film festival circuit. Five of the films will be shown in Un Certain Regard, four in Directors' Fortnight, and one in the ACID section. In addition, the DFI has selected three films by Qatar-based and regional talent for the Cinéfondation Atelier at Cannes.

Certain Regard features the following films

Davy Chou's film All The People I'll Never Be (France, Germany, Belgium, South Korea, Romania, Qatar) is about 25-year-old Freddie, who returns to South Korea for the first time to reconnect with her roots. The independent young woman sets out to find her biological parents in a place she is unfamiliar with.

Hayakawa Chie's Plan 75 (Japan, France, Philippines, Qatar) is set in a near-future Japan, where the government's "Plan 75" promotes older individuals to be willingly euthanized in order to address a super-aged society. An elderly grandmother whose only means of survival are dwindling, a realistic Plan 75 salesperson, and a young Filipino laborer must make life or death decisions.

Ariel Escalante Meza's project Domingo and the Mist (Costa Rica, Qatar) was cultivated at Qumra, the Doha Film Institute's annual talent incubator event. Domingo, a 65-year-old man, is threatened by thugs hired by a developer to evict the town's residents and make room for the construction of a huge expressway. However, his country conceals a hidden secret—the ghost of his departed wife.

Mediterranean Fever (Palestine, France, Germany, Cyprus, Qatar) is a Qumra-supported production about Waleed, a Palestinian man who lives happily with his wife and children in his sea-view home in Haifa. Waleed meets his new neighbor one day, who quickly becomes the most important person in his life.

The Institute financed three films at Cannes' Cinéfondation Atelier, which were chosen for the quality of their directors' previous work and the potential of their present ideas. The following films have been chosen:

Suzannah Mirghani's Cotton Queen (Sudan, Qatar). It's about Nafisa, a 15-year-old girl who lives a humble existence in a cotton-growing village. Her days are spent picking cotton with her companions, and her heart belongs to a country boy.

Ahmed Fawzi-rendition Saleh's of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet from the Slums (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar), is set in contemporary Egypt and is steeped in the unique and rarely shot cosmos of Sufi spirituality.

Ali Al Fatlawi's novel Al Baseer – The Blind Ferryman (Iraq, Switzerland, Qatar) is about a blind ferryman named Ayoub who lives in the southern Iraqi marshes. Despite his loss of vision, he manages to navigate the swamps and earns his living by ferrying people and stuff.

The three films shown in the Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des réalisateurs), a Cannes Film Festival independent selection, are:

Youssef Chebbi's film Ashkal (Tunisia, France, Qatar) is set in the gardens of Carthage, a new district where modern structures contrast with abandoned sites and wastelands, and where the body of a caretaker is discovered calcined in the center of a construction site.

Melek, Sana, Fidé, and Meriem labor long days in the fields as a way to be together and escape the monotony of their life in the countryside in Erige Sehiri's novel Under the Fig Trees (Tunisia, Switzerland, Qatar, France). They are constantly looking for new ways to have a good time, often at the expense of others.

Ali Cherri's film The Dam (Lebanon, France, Sudan, Germany, Serbia, Qatar) is set in Merowe Dam in North Sudan and tells the story of Maher, who works in a traditional brickyard fed by the Nile's waters. Every evening, he sneaks off into the desert to construct a bizarre mud structure.

Manuela Martelli's 1976 (Chile, Qatar) is about Carmen, a bourgeois housewife whose life is disrupted when the priest at the church where she does charity work requests her to look after a young revolutionary who has been injured and to whom he is providing sanctuary.

The Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion (L’ACID) parallel programme at Cannes is dedicated to exceptional independent films. This year, the DFI-supported film ‘Polaris’ (France, Greenland, Qatar) by Ainara Vera will screen at ACID.