Qatar, the tiny Arab state rich in oil and gas that recently offered to replace Donald Trump’s Air Force One with a $400 million jet likened to a “palace in the sky,” is at Cannes signaling its ambitions to take its nascent film and TV business to the next level.
The Qatar Film Committee, an official body that is part of the Media City Qatar hub and is tasked with driving growth of the country’s entertainment industry, is at the festival and led by Hassan Al Thawadi. He is the Qatari lawyer who oversaw 2022 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, which was considered a triumph for the country. Al Thawadi has now added the movie biz to his oversight. Furthermore, two sources familiar with the global film scene said top players in the emirate have initiated discussions with U.S. showbiz executives about co-financing and producing original content.
It comes as Hollywood, always on the prowl for capital, is on the hunt for new sources of financing. And Qatar is trying to diversify from the energy sector and into forms of soft power, such as culture and media. For movie studios, it is becoming harder and harder to find investment. Wall Street has soured on the sector, believing that the entertainment industry is over-leveraged, having poured money into launching streaming services, many of which have taken too long to turn a profit. Moreover, once- promising foreign markets, such as China, have turned away from U.S. media conglomerates in favor of putting more of their resources into developing their local pipeline of films and series.
Qatar has an unprecedently strong presence this year in the South of France, a preamble to possibly positioning itself as a partner for Hollywood, though the ultimate goal is to develop a local industry. Also on the Croisette are Doha-based Katara Studios, which produced the opening and closing ceremonies of the Qatar World Cup. The studios are ramping up production of movies for the international market with a slate that includes “Sakhr,” a biopic of Kuwaiti trailblazer Mohamed Al Sharekh, who developed the first Arabic-language operating system for computers, and fantasy feature “Sari & Amira,” which centers on an outlaw Bedouin bandit couple who seek a legendary treasure in the desert, directed by AJ Al Thani.
The emirate’s well-established Doha Film Institute, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, is at Cannes with eight films supported through its grants, including “Once Upon a Time in Gaza,” by Palestinian directorial duo Tarzan and Arab Nasser. Qatar, which played a key role in brokering the now- collapsed ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, is a strong supporter of Palestinian cinema.
More broadly, the DFI is a top Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region film-industry driver. Its unique Qumra event, an incubator and co-production market that helps foster first and second works, mostly by Arab directors, held its 11th edition in April in Doha. The event’s mentors this year included Johnnie To, Walter Salles and Darius Khondji. Its artistic advisor is Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman, know for movies addressing the long-running Arab-Israeli conflicts such as “Divine Intervention,” “The Time That Remains” and most recently “It Must Be Heaven,” which premiered at Cannes in 2019.
At Cannes, DFI CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi will be unveiling plans for how it will transform its existing Ajyal Film Festival dedicated to youth and family-friendly cinema into a more ambitious international event for a broader audience. The reconfigured DFI fest, to be launched in the Qatari capital in November, “represents the next step in Qatar’s journey of cultural leadership,” Alremaihi recently told Variety.
Brent Lang contributed to this report