At Cannes and around the world, Arab Cinema Center is creating a platform for filmmakers

The Arab Cinema Center is in full flow at the Cannes Film Festival, following its debut at the Berlin International Film Festival in February.

The brainchild of Egyptian distributor and multimedia agency MAD Solutions, the centre aims to offer an international platform to promote pan-Arab cinema, and to bring industry professionals, creatives and fans together.

Although the appearance at Cannes was only the centre’s second outing, Abdallah Al Shami, who heads MAD’s Gulf office in Abu Dhabi, says the concept is something that his company has always held dear.

“We’ve worked this way ever since we started,” he says. “We just want to try to build bridges between Arab filmmakers and professionals. There’s too much isolation among the countries in the Arab world when it comes to cinema and we really want to break that.

“It shouldn’t be a case of: ‘I’m Egyptian, so I watch Egyptian films, I’m Lebanese, so I watch Lebanese films, and so on.’ We want to bring all the Arab countries together, promote co-­productions, and that’s what we’re trying to do with our stand at Cannes.

“We want everyone from the Arab industry to come down to our networking sessions, which run from 11am to noon and 4pm to 5pm every day. If you’re a producer, a sales agent, a director, just come down, because we want to create opportunities.”

However, the centre is not solely focused on working within the Middle East film industry, says Al Shami, it is also seeking co-production opportunities in Europe, North America and the Far East. “We’ll be heading to the Venice Festival next, as well as Toronto, then Rotterdam. We’re taking this internationally and we want Arab filmmakers to join us on the journey.”

The first weekend at Cannes has just ended, with nearly another week to go, so it may be a little early to judge the results, but Al Shami revealed that at least one ACC partner had found a potential co-producer for a new film.