Flana

Source: Courtesy of Karada Films

Flana

EXCLUSIVE: Iraqi producer-director Zahraa Ghandour’s debut feature Flana,  receiving its European premiere in IDFA this week, has been snapped up for world sales by Marcella Jelic’s Croatian outfit, Split Screen.

Jelic is already reporting strong buyer interest in the film in advance of its IDFA launch on November 17.

The documentary follows the director as she searches for her missing childhood friend, Nour, who disappeared in strange and sinister circumstances aged 10, one of the many girls and young women abandoned by their families in Iraq.

“Flana” is a term for a forgotten or anonymous female in Iraqi dialect.

Zahraa Ghandour

Flana has become the first feature by an Iraqi female director to secure selection to a major festival. It is in international competition in IDFA having also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this autumn.

The film received public support in Iraq through a new funding scheme created by the Ministry of Culture and the Prime Minister’s Office.

Ghandour’s Baghdad-based Karada Films produced Flana,  in partnership with Lila Production in France. The project received backing from the CNC, Doha Film Institute, The Whickers, the AFAC Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, and the IDFA Bertha Fund.

Camera d’Or

'The President's Cake'

Source: Sony Pictures Classics

‘The President’s Cake’

The acquisition comes amid signs of growth in the Iraqi production sector spearheaded by Hasan Hadi’s directorial debut, The President’s Cake, which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in May. Sold by Films Boutique, The President’s Cake will be released in the US early next year by Sony Pictures Classics.

Karada, named after a neighbourhood in Baghdad, now has a slate of new projects, both fiction and documentary, in development.

“We are five people, two people producing, a production manager and also a couple of directors,” Ghandour said.

Ghandour is also attending IDFA to support The Sixth Story, a feature doc from Ahmed Abd being pitched at IDFA Academy. In the film, Ahmed and his friend Ali confront traumatic memories of Iraq’s sectarian violence

Ghandour herself is now moving into drama with a short film called Safe Place For Love,  a dark comedy about a young couple on a date in Baghdad that goes disastrously wrong.

 

 

 

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