SANAD, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival's fund for filmmakers from the Arab world, announced today this year's application deadlines. The current cycle of applications closes on February 15, 2011. The next SANAD application cycle begins on February 16 and ends on July 1, 2011.
Launched in April 2009, SANAD provides Arab filmmakers with support for their feature-length narrative or documentary projects. Each year, SANAD issues two open calls for applications and awards a total of US$500,000 in development and post-production grants.

SANAD is an integral part of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival's commitment to independent, auteur and original filmmaking in the Arab world. Much more than just a film fund, SANAD is dedicated to providing year-round support and advice to grant recipients. The SANADLab works closely with SANAD grantees, running workshops and panel discussions, and scheduling meetings with film experts and mentors for them during the Festival.

The international film community has embraced SANAD (a word that connotes support or help in Arabic) as a much-needed boost for Arab filmmaking and the fund's selection panel was impressed by the quality and quantity of submissions. 127 films from twelve countries were submitted during SANAD's first application cycle, with dozens of submissions arriving in the first couple of weeks alone.

SANAD-funded films to be released in 2011: Death For Sale (Faouzi Bensaïdi, Morocco/Belgium/France); In My Mother's Arms (Atia Al-Daradji and Mohamed Al-Daradji, Iraq/UK); In the Last Days of the City (Tamer El Said, Egypt/UK); Mohammad Saved From the Waters (Safaa Fathy, Egypt/France), My Brother (Kamal El Mahouti, Morocco/France) and On the Plank (Leila Kilani, Morocco/France).

To find out more about SANAD, including rules and regulations, please refer to the Abu Dhabi Film Festival website:

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival (formerly the Middle East International Film Festival) was established in 2007, with the aim of helping to create a vibrant film culture throughout the region. The event, presented each October by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) under the patronage of itschairman H.E. Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, is committed to curating exceptional programs to engage and educate the local community, inspire filmmakers and nurture the growth of the regional film industry.
As the only festival in the region where works by Arab filmmakers are represented equally in competition with those by major talents of world cinema, the Festival offers Abu Dhabi's diverse and enthusiastic audiences a means of engaging with their own and others' cultures through the art of cinema. At the same time, a strong focus on the bold new voices of Arab cinema connects with Abu Dhabi's role as a burgeoning cultural capital in the region and marks the Festival as a place for the world to discover and gauge the pulse of recent Arab film.