Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2012: The Repentant takes top Narrative prize
Alex Ritman | November 23, 2012
The winners of the 4th Doha Tribeca Film Festival’s Arab Film Competition were announced last night at a ceremony in the Al Rayyan theatre in the city’s Souq Waqif.
The top prize of Best Narrative Feature Film, with prize money of $100,000, went to The Repentant from Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache, about a former Jihadist in Algeria who attempts to integrate back into society. In rather a nice turn of events, Allouache said he had made the film from the prize money he had received at last year’s Doha Tribeca Film Festival for his previous title, Normal!
In the documentary section, Lebanese Rocket Society – which beautifully explores the dreams that led to Lebanon’s brief involvement in the space race during the 1960s and one of the talking points of this year’s festival – took the main prize.
The top gong in the Made in Qatar category, this year bigger than ever before, went to Bader, a documentary about a young boy in a local elementary school and directed by Sara Al-Saadi, Maaria Assami and Latifa Al-Darwish.
