Dima Hamdan, one of nine LFS Hothouse participants, has won the Abu Dhabi Film Commission's Shasha Grant, for her project Kidnapped. The Shasha Grant is designed to showcase rising talent in film and television across the Middle East.
Press release
ABU DHABI, October 15, 2010 - Abu Dhabi Film Commission today announced the successful completion of the fourth annual Circle Conference at the Intercontinental Abu Dhabi and split its $100,000 Shasha Grant between two filmmakers. H.E. Mohammed Khalaf Al Mazrouei, Culture and Heritage Affairs adviser at Crown Prince Court and Director General of ADACH presented the Shasha Grant prize in the presence of Sheikha Al-Zain Al-Sabah from Kwait and Eissa Saif Al-Mazrouei Director of Special Projects at ADACH and David Shepheard Director of ADFC to the filmmakers Dima Hamdan and Kasem Kharsa, for their films The Kidnap and Shelter. The Shasha Grant is designed to showcase rising talent in film and television across the Middle East.
Read the full press release at www.film.gov.ae/en/PressRelease/desc.aspx?NID=89&MenuID=21&CatID=37&mnu=Cat
Dima Hamdan
Dima Hamdan is a Palestinian-Jordanian journalist based in London. She currently works as a news producer with the BBC Arabic Service. Over the last two years, Hamdan has written and directed five short films. Two of her films, Going Away and 11am at Firdous Square-Part 1 were winners of the Entry Level competition at Filmaka.com. Dima’s latest production, Gaza-London, won the Best Arab Short prize at the Jordan Film festival of 2009. The film was also screened in several festivals in the US and UK, including the Cambridge Film Festival of 2009.
Dima is currently developing the script for her first feature project, The Kidnap (working title). The project has been selected for the RAWI Sundance Middle Eastern Screenwriters’ Lab of 2009, and the Babylon Europe initiative of 2010. Hamdan is also planning to shoot her next short film in Jordan this autumn.
More info on Hothouse at http://lfs.org.uk/hothouse/