The Abu Dhabi Film Commission has unveiled the 2010 Shasha Grant finallists in the $100,000 international screenwriting competition.

Competing for the award are Rana Kazkaz with Dama Scenes (Syria-US), Kasem Kharsa with Shelter (Egypt-US), Mohamed Abdulmajid with Beit Soureen (Palestine-UK), Gihan Faisa with Burkan (Egypt), Dima Hamdan with The Kidnap (Jordan-UK), and Rifqi Assaf with The Curve (Jordan).

The finallists will travel to the Circle conference to pitch their projects to a jury of industry leaders. The winner will be announced during the conference, set to run from October 13-15.

This year the Shasha Grant was open to Arabic-language entries for the first time and organisers received almost 150 feature-length submissions from across the Middle East and other parts of the world. Forty percent of the entries were in Arabic and nearly a quarter were from UAE-based writers.

Saudi film-maker Haifaa Al Mansour was last year’s winner with Wajda, which has been set up as a US-German co-production.