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Netflix MENA announced in a tweet on Monday a $250,000 (MAD2.45 million) grant for female Arab writers, producers, and directors.
The money is part of the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity to the Arab World to help underrepresented groups to work in cinema.
The money will be split between the filmmakers from three Arab countries to help them create their films.
The winners of the grant are: Moroccan Asmae El Moudir, Tunisian Sarra Abidi, and Diala Kachmar, Jana Wehbe, and Tania Khoury from Lebanon.
Asmae El Moudir
Asmae El Moudir is a 44-year-old Moroccan Producer and director. Her first documentary “The Postcard” (Fi Zaouiyati Oummi), was produced and shown by Al Jazeera’s documentary channel in 2020.
The Documentary touched on topics such as emancipation and migration. The film represented Moroccan cinema during the Arab Film Festival in October 2021 in Stockholm, Sweden.
“To be a woman filmmaker in the Arab world, that means there are a lot of women whose voices are heard through me, because I have a tool which is cinema,” Asmae El Moudir told Netflix MENA.
El Moudir added that “the Arab woman in the Arab world, can go through tragedies, problems, challenges, and pains that no woman anywhere else in the world goes through.”
Read also: Tunisia’s Carthage Film Festival Awards Female Moroccan Directors
Headquartered in Lebanon, AFAC is an independent foundation that supports artists, writers, researchers, and intellectuals in the Arab world. AFAC was established in 2007 by Arab cultural activists. AFAC seeks to establish a rich cultural and artistic scene across the Arab World.
As of February 2022, Netflix is the world’s second-largest entertainment company. The streaming platform gained 36 million subscribers in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and another 18.2 million in 2021.
The Netflix Fund for Creative Equity is a global fund that was launched in early 2021 with the goal of increasing opportunities for people from underrepresented groups to have their voices heard.
