American actor David Hasselhoff will be one of the judges for this year’s Arab Film Studio short film competition.
The judging panel, made up of 24 film and TV-industry professionals, also includes the writer Wesley Strick (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Ashok Amritraj, the host of Chance of a Lifetime and the chief executive of Hyde Park Entertainment, and the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), who is working on Image Nation’s eagerly anticipated documentary about the teenage Pakistani educational reformer Malala Yousafzai.
Hasselhoff, also known as “The Hoff”, is best known for his roles in the US TV series Knight Rider and Baywatch, as well as an inexplicably popular career as a pop star in Germany that has largely passed the rest of the world by.
“Arab Film Studio is great way for any budding filmmaker to get started in the industry,” he says. “I’m so honoured to be a part of this year’s judging panel and I can’t wait to see what each contestant has come up with.”
Arab Film Studio is a short film competition, run by Image Nation and twofour54, that aims to find and train new talent, and give aspiring filmmakers the tools to carve out a career for themselves.
Previous winner Sara Saber and runner-up Omar Butti are also on this year’s panel.
“We are thrilled to have such an acclaimed panel of judges for this year’s competition,” said Michael Garin, the chief executive of Image Nation. “It’s great to give these budding filmmakers the chance to have their films seen by industry players. Over the past four years the standard of our contestants’ films have gotten better and better and I’m excited to see what comes from this year’s competition.”
This September, Arab Film Studio is also set to launch a documentary section alongside its existing short-film programme, and Image Nation marketing manager Gehad Darwish said he hopes that it will have a similarly impressive judging panel.
“The documentary programme is still developing, and will continue to do so,” he says. “But we’d love to have some big-name judges.
“This year for the Arab Film Studio narrative competition we have big-name celebrities auch as David Hasselhoff, and we’d love to do something similar. It will keep on developing with time.”
The short narrative film section will conclude with an award ceremony in October. It includes entries from countries including the UAE, Egypt, UK and the Netherlands.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
