The MENA Film Festival is celebrating its milestone fifth edition this November in Vancouver, Canada  and we want you to be a part! For the past four years, MENA has been Vancouver's first and only festival dedicated to films from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) / South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. We are excited for the chance to continue showcasing stories and experiences from our local community, across Canada and the global diaspora.

We acknowledge that our festival is based off the unceded, ancestral and traditional and lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlí̓lwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Vision

We seek films that challenge the historical misrepresentations of MENA/SWANA culture and experience in cinema, prioritizing films made by MENA/SWANA filmmakers from the region and diaspora. We welcome submissions from emerging as well as established artists from wherever MENA/SWANA identities are found and forged. We encourage and celebrate a variety of genres, including narrative, non-narrative, experimental, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and comedy.

COVID-19 Health and Safety Plan 2023: As long as the global pandemic stays with us, we continue to follow the latest health guidelines.. While we maintain a flexible outlook regarding the format and venue of our festival in November, our decision to provide an in-person, hybrid or fully digital platform will be based entirely on the latest community health and safety recommendations as set forth by provincial and federal health bodies and informed  with the safety of our immediate community paramount.

‍

Rules & Terms

- We consider no cultural or national identity rooted in the so-called Middle East as canonical. Whether as MENA, SWANA, West Asian and North African (WANA) or any other delimiter of the region, we leave it in the hands of our prospective submitters how they identify with the region. Our programming strives to represent all communities within the region, including those marginalized by ethnicity, language, or religion: be they aboriginal, nomad, stateless linguistic groupings and other identities that don't fall neatly into any orientalist image of MENA/SWANA.

We also seek immigrant narratives from ethnic and linguistic enclaves across the diaspora: pan-Arabic, West Asian, religiously heterodox, as well as personal identities that interface with a postmodern politics: queer, post-colonial, anti-racist and Indigenous selfhood.

We do not accept films with misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, zionist, nationalist or racist content.

If you have any questions or want to know if your film qualifies, please contact sarah.trad (at) menafilmfestival.com

Categories

This festival showcases

• Feature films (no more than 140 minutes);
• Short films (30 minutes or less);
• Documentary (short or feature length);
• Experimental.

When your film is selected, it is automatically eligible for awards.

AWARDS - as selected by an independent jury of industry and community

Scarlet Pomegranate Award - Recognizing overall artistry, storytelling, technical achievement and beauty

Buraq Award -   Recognizing films that break the mould, experiment and help us see  the region and its experiences in a new light.

Audience Choice Award - Top rated film chosen by audiences through in-festival balloting.

Azure Phoenix - Recognizing an individual contributor-whether writer, actor, director etc.-that represents MENA/SWANA identity across the region and its diaspora amongst the year’s programming.

Submission Guidelines

• Works must have a significant (more than half) representation of MENA/SWANA-identifying people in key creative roles OR the subject matter must largely treat the region/identity in some significant way (see above for what we mean by MENA/SWANA).
• Films in a language other than English must have English subtitles.
• Due to our capacity, we only accept single-channel films (ie. no art installation, etc.)
• All submissions, by established or emerging artists, are welcome and will be guaranteed two screenings during the adjudication process; films by artists who are "breaking into" the industry will be given particular consideration as part of our effort for newer filmmakers to reach a wider audience.
• All genres are welcome, and experimental and original portrayals of the MENA/SWANA region are encouraged (see "Vision" above).
• If your film is selected for the 2023 MENA Film Festival, you must submit a DCP file and a ProRes 422 Quicktime backup file. Files must be delivered on an external hard drive or USB flash drive and be received no later than September 1st, 2023.
• If your film is selected, in addition to the DCP file, the following material is required for promotional use by Friday, August 4th, 2023.
  
  1. Minimum of 2 film stills;
  2. Film poster;
  3. A trailer (format: mp4 HD 1920 x 1080);
  4. A logline (one sentence) and a short film description (100 words);
  5. Director’s photo and short bio.
• If you fail to submit all the material by the deadline, your film will be disqualified from screening.
• In the event of an online festival, you agree to have your film screened virtually Canada-wide on our online festival platform.
• As a non-profit, we do rely upon submission fees to help cover costs of reviewing and programming films. Keeping our commitment to young artists and community accessibility in-mind, however, we are providing a limited number of *20* fee waivers to filmmakers. While we do not delve into the personal circumstances of each request, we may ask follow-up questions, and we expect that those asking for a waiver are being honest about their circumstance and are aware that receiving a waiver may deprive others of the same opportunity.

To request a waiver, please fill in this form: --

We will be considering waiver requests and provide a response by February 10th and again on March 10th.