Inaugural Sharjah Film Platform Feature Fund announces two winners for prize

Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) recently announced the winners of its inaugural Sharjah Film Platform (SFP) Feature Fund.

- Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

The Dhs500,000 grant is split equally between Annemarie Jacir and Mohamad W. Ali for their projects Palestine 36 (2025) and Colored Sweets (2026), respectively.

Palestine's official submission for the 2025 Academy Awards, Palestine 36, is a period drama. The film follows Yusuf, a young man navigating the political unrest on the streets of Jerusalem as well as Jaffa and Al Basma during the 1936 revolt against colonial rule, one of the largest uprisings against the British Empire.

Jacir's most ambitious project to date, the film features Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, Yasmine Al Massri and Jeremy Irons. Palestine 36 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5. Mohamad W. Ali's debut feature Colored Sweets tells the story of two children living in a remote Kashmiri village during the winter of 1995. With Eid around the corner, the siblings embark on a journey to taste the colourful sweets they had only heard about. Full of laughter and wonder, the film is a tender tale about patience, poverty and the quiet resilience of children in strife-torn Kashmir in the 1990s.

The decision to divide the grant equally between the two film projects was made unanimously by the jury consisting of Sohail Dahdal (award-winning filmmaker and professor of media, American University of Sharjah), Suha Arraf (award-winning filmmaker and script doctor), Talal Afifi, (founder of the Sudan Film Factory and President of the Sudan Independent Film Festival) and Nawar Al Qassimi (Vice President, Sharjah Art Foundation).