Annemarie Jacir, Palestine 36 (still), 2025. Image courtesy of Philistine Films
Sharjah Art Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of its inaugural Sharjah Film Platform Feature Fund. The 500,000 AED 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 premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025.
Mohamad W. Ali’s under-production 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. Born in Syria and educated in India and South Korea, Ali has directed seven short fiction films.
Palestine 36 and Colored Sweets will be screened at the future editions of Sharjah Film Platform.
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).
To know more about Sharjah Art Foundation’s film programming and other initiatives, visit sharjahart.org.
Both films present urgent and resonant stories that promise to make a lasting impact on Arab, Asian and global cinema. They distinguished themselves through their urgency and importance, their confrontation of questions central to our times and the sharp, captivating artistic visions of their directors. We believe it is especially important to support Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 as it is a film that revives buried memory and restores the prerogative of storytelling to its rightful owners, particularly in a time of censorship and propaganda against the Palestinian people. Colored Sweets, Mohamad W. Ali’s debut feature, tells a poignant story of children’s hope and joy amid strife, carrying a universal resonance. The filmed sequences are breathtaking, capturing stunning natural landscapes with poetic cinematography that reflects the director’s sensitivity, passion and genuine love for cinema. We have full confidence in his exceptional talent and ability to deliver a powerful and meaningful cinematic work.
Annemarie Jacir
Living and working in Palestine, Annemarie Jacir has written, directed and produced more than 16 films. Her films have premiered in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam and Toronto. All three of her feature films were selected as Palestine’s official Academy Award entries. Her short film, Like Twenty Impossible (2003), was the first Arab short film to be selected in Cannes and made finalist for the Academy Awards. Jacir is a member of the Asia of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy, AMPAS and BAFTA. In 2024, the Toronto International Film Festival hosted her retrospective. In the same year, she was granted a BlackStar Luminary Award.
Mohamed W. Ali
Mohamed W. Ali is a filmmaker whose work draws from life in war zones and everyday human resilience. He studied mass media at Damascus University and later Film Direction and Screenplay Writing at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute in India and Busan Asian Film Academy in South Korea. His fiction and documentary films explore themes of childhood, war, displacement and memory. Ali is the first Arab filmmaker to shoot an Arabic fiction film in India and a short fiction in South Korea. His work has received 14 international awards and been screened in more than 100 festivals.
Sharjah Film Platform (SFP) is an annual festival of independent cinema and experimental filmmaking where audiences can discover new approaches to film and art. The 10-day event—which includes a range of regional and international films, talks by filmmakers and industry professionals, workshops and gatherings—is centred around Mirage City Cinema, the open-air theatre in Sharjah’s historical quarter.
Organised by Sharjah Art Foundation, SFP foregrounds recent cinematic achievements by international filmmakers and artists, noteworthy classics from around the region as well as experimental films that challenge the idea of what film practice is today.
Sharjah Art Foundation is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. The Foundation advances an experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the distinct culture of the region and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation’s core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; ambitious and experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications.
Established in 2009 to expand programmes beyond the Sharjah Biennial, which launched in 1993, the Foundation is a critical resource for artists and cultural organisations in the Gulf and a conduit for local, regional and international developments in contemporary art. The Foundation’s deep commitment to developing and sustaining the cultural life and heritage of Sharjah is reflected through year-round exhibitions, performances, screenings and educational programmes in the city of Sharjah and across the Emirate, often hosted in historic buildings that have been repurposed as cultural and community centres. A growing collection reflects the Foundation’s support of contemporary artists in the realisation of new work and its recognition of the contributions made by pioneering modern artists from the region and around the world.
Sharjah Art Foundation is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons. Hoor Al Qasimi serves as President and Director. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Sharjah is the third largest of the seven United Arab Emirates, and the only one bridging the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Reflecting the deep commitment to the arts, architectural preservation and cultural education embraced by its ruler, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Sharjah is home to more than 20 museums and has long been known as the cultural hub of the United Arab Emirates. It was named UNESCO's Arab Capital of Culture for 1998 and the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2019.
Alyazeyah Al Marri
alyazeyah@sharjahart.org
+971 (0)6 5444113
Annemarie Jacir, Palestine 36 (still), 2025. Image courtesy of Philistine Films