Malmö Arab Film Festival wins the 2023 Malmö City Business Awards' Creative Industries Award

Malmö Arab Film Festival one of the Arab Cinema Center's (ACC) partners won the Creative Industries Award on March 2nd during the activities of the 2023 Malmö City Business Awards. 

Janne Grönholm Municipal Councilor for Culture and Leisure and the Deputy Mayor of Malmö presented the award to the festival and its founder Mohamed Keblawi during the awards ceremony.

"This year's winners succeeded in a brilliant way in contributing to both important knowledge exchange, collaborations, financing, and business in an industry with complex co-financing systems. By building bridges between cultures in times of polarization, they contributed to the emergence of more voices and stories, as well as to the valuable development of the hub of film industry actors in the city," explained the event's host before announcing the winner of the Creative Industries Award. 

For his part, Mohamed Keblawi expressed his happiness for winning the award, saying: "Winning the Malmö Business Life Award for Creative Industry is a source of great pride for our festival. Thank you to the city of Malmö and the jury of the Business Life Awards. It's fantastic to feel that there are people who appreciate what you do. This award will give us the motivation to promote our work and be an example of serious and successful work for a better life."

In related news, the ACC recently announced in its latest edition of the Arab Cinema Magazine that it granted the Arab Cinema Personality of the Year Award to Keblawi during the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival for his remarkable efforts in supporting Arab cinema in Sweden and Scandinavia through the Malmö Arab Film Festival.

Moreover, he received the 2021 City of Malmö’s Grant for Art and Culture — an annual grant allocated to 12 creators in the fields of music, theater, cinema, and literature.

The Malmö Arab Film Festival and Industry Days are considered the most prominent platforms dedicated to Arab cinema in Europe and the only events of their kind in Scandinavia. Due to the diverse and coexistent cultures on Malmö’s soil, the function of the festival is to build bridges between those cultures using films as a universal visual language, capable of simulating the human dimension in all its diversity. Malmö Industry Days also contributed to a number of Swedish-Arab film co-productions. The upcoming edition of the festival and its sidebar will run from April 28th to May 4th.

Established by MAD Solutions in 2015, the ACC is a nonprofit organization registered in Amsterdam. The ACC is an international promotional platform for Arab cinema, as it provides the Arab filmmaking industry with a professional window to connect with its counterparts from all over the world through a number of events the center organizes.

The ACC also provides networking opportunities with representatives of companies and institutions specialized in co-production and international distribution. The center’s activities vary between film markets, stands, and pavilions; networking sessions, one-on-one meetings bringing together Arab and foreign filmmakers, and welcome parties; meetings with international organizations and festivals; and the issuance of the Arab Cinema Magazine, which is distributed at the leading international film festivals and markets.

Furthermore, a newsletter subscription is now available on the ACC's website, allowing users to obtain digital copies of the Arab Cinema Magazine, as well as news on the ACC's activities, notifications of application dates for grants, festivals, and offers from educational and training institutions. This is in addition to updates on Arab films participating at festivals, exclusive news on the Arab Cinema LAB, and highlights from the ACC's partners and their future projects. 

The ACC also launched an English-language Arab Cinema Guide on its website that comprises a variety of tools presented collectively for the first time to offer information on Arab cinema to filmmakers inside and outside of the Arab world. It also aims to facilitate filmmakers' access to international markets and help film industry representatives easily identify Arab film productions.