Naomi Kawase Heads Doha Film Festival Jury — SkimNews
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- Naomi Kawase will preside over the main competition jury of the upcoming Doha Film Festival, which runs Nov. 19-27 in Qatar’s capital.
- Adam Bessa (“Ghost Trail”), Dora Bouchoucha, Gianfranco Rosi (“Fire at Sea”) and Kamal Aljafari (“With Hasan in Gaza”) join Kawase on the five-member jury.
- Sara Ishaq’s “The Station” is the in-competition opener for the festival’s second edition, with the drama examining the impact of Yemen’s civil war.
- Doha Film Festival has transformed the youth- and family-focused Ajyal Film Festival into a more ambitious international event for a broader audience.
- Doha Film Festival will award $75,000 for best narrative, $50,000 for documentary, $45,000 for artistic achievement and a gender-neutral $15,000 performance acting prize.
- Naomi Kawase won Cannes’ Caméra d’Or for “Moe no Suzaku” in 1997, served on the 2013 Cannes competition jury and joined the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra mentoring program in 2016.
Why it matters: Kawase’s chairmanship places a Cannes-honored auteur at the center of a five-member jury that also includes Kamal Aljafari. For competing filmmakers, the revamped Nov. 19-27 festival offers $75,000 for best narrative alongside $50,000 for documentary, marking a material expansion from Ajyal’s youth-and-family programming toward international independent cinema.
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