Netflix is partnering with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) to support five Arab women filmmakers. The pact will see the streamer provide a one-time grant of $250,000 to female producers and directors in the Arab world through the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity which aims to help create new opportunities for underrepresented communities within the entertainment industry.
Five projects have been shortlisted, spearheaded by women from Tunisia, Lebanon and Morocco. Among the projects are director/producer Asmae El Moudir’s The Mother Of All Lies which has been shortlisted for the non-fiction category. Lebanese producers Diala Kachmar (From The Other Shore), Jana Wehbe (The Day Vladimir Died) and Tania Khoury (Manity) have fiction projects in the mix; rounding out the five is Tunisian director/producer Sarra Abidi’s My Name Is Clara.
Says Nuha el Tayeb, Netflix’s Director Content Acquisitions (MENA and Turkey), “We are committed to telling stories about and by women across our slate in the Arab world. The Arab world has a long-standing history of women in entertainment, and we’ve had incredible successes and firsts from the region that we’re all very proud of. But in order to give more people a chance to see their lives reflected on screen, we need more women behind and in front of the camera.”
Notes AFAC Executive Director, ”More and more Arab women filmmakers are creating moving images that have the power to shed light on the realities of the region. This second collaboration with Neftlix, this time to support women in the field of cinema, complements perfectly AFAC’s mission to promote diversity of voices and narratives.”