Venice’s Final Cut Boosts Emerging African, Arab Talents and Offers ‘Window’ Into Underrepresented Regions

When she approached Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera 13 years ago with a proposal for a market event devoted to films from Africa and the Middle East, industry veteran Alessandra Speciale says the festival chief “immediately understood the importance of the program.”

At the time Speciale, who’d been running a similar program at the San Sebastian Film Festival with French producer Thierry Lenouvel, recognized a gap in the market when it came to providing a platform for filmmakers working in largely underrepresented regions.

“I thought it was important to give more visibility to cinema that was not so well-known in international festivals,” Speciale tells Variety. The aim was to offer both material support to films in post-production from Africa and the Middle East as well as a “window” into cinema from those regions.

Thirteen years later, Final Cut is one of Venice’s longest-running industry programs, both a point of pride for Speciale, who curates the selection, and a reminder of how much work remains to be done. Representation, particularly for filmmakers from sub-Saharan Africa, remains a challenge at most of the world’s top-shelf festivals, while the practical realities of production in both Africa and the MENA region make Final Cut’s cash and in-kind prizes essential to getting many films across the finish line.

Each year, six projects from African and Arab countries are selected to take part in the program, with an additional two films this year joining as part of the Venice Production Bridge’s Focus on the U.K. and Focus on Morocco. The selected projects will be presented to industry guests on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, during a special session in the Sala Pasinetti of Venice’s Palazzo del Cinema.

Organizers received 78 submissions — a 50% bump from the previous year — with 30 of those projects originating from sub-Saharan Africa. The selection process, Speciale says, is “strict,” though she aims for diversity in terms of geographical, genre and gender representation, while also trying to give a boost to debut filmmakers “to take the first step in the international market.” Previous alumni include Alain Gomis, Tala Hadid, Lemohang Mosese, Kaouther Ben Hania and Karim Ainouz.

Among the lineup at this year’s event are established directors like Morocco’s Hind Bensari, who’s presenting the documentary “Out of School” and whose last film, “We Could Be Heroes,” was awarded best documentary at Hot Docs in 2018; and Palestinian-Egyptian-British filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky, whose documentaries have played at Locarno and Berlin. Farouky is in post-production on his fiction debut “Standing at the Ruins.”

Newcomers presenting their first features include Belgium-based Palestinian filmmaker Rakan Mayasi, with “Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep,” and Cameroon’s Auguste Kouemo Yanghu, with “House of the Wind.” Meanwhile, Angolan filmmaker Hugo Salvaterra will show material from his feature debut, “My Semba,” the latest film from powerhouse Angolan indie film collective Geração 80.

This year marks the first appearance at Final Cut for Yemen, which arrives with two selections: “Let’s Play Soldiers” (working title), a documentary from first-time director Mariam Al-Dhubhani, as well as “The Station,” a fiction feature by Sara Ishaq, Oscar-nominated in 2012 for her short documentary “Karama Has No Walls.”

Finally there’s Senegalese filmmaker Mamadou Dia, a first-feature prizewinner in Locarno for “Nafi’s Father.” Dia is wrapping post-production on the documentary “Legacy,” which follows a year at the prestigious École des Sables dance academy in Senegal.

Dia describes the Final Cut selection as a “huge step” for the film, noting the distribution struggles faced by many documentaries and the boost in visibility offered by the Venice event. The director says he’s already fielding calls from festivals hoping to secure a premiere for “Legacy,” insisting: “This already is a win.”