Sharjah Film Platform shows 26 films from 30 October, with Sissako in focus
The ninth Sharjah Film Platform runs from 30 October to 8 November at the open-air Mirage City Cinema and VOX Cinemas City Centre Al Zahia, with free courses and a masterclass by Abderrahmane Sissako.
Sharjah Film Platform, the film festival run by Sharjah Art Foundation, opens its ninth edition on 30 October. For ten days, until 8 November, it screens 26 titles at Mirage City Cinema, the open-air theatre in Sharjah's historic quarter, and at VOX Cinemas in City Centre Al Zahia.
The programme brings work by new and established filmmakers from places including Palestine, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Mexico, India and Haiti. It opens with Letters (2025), Josef Khallouf's anthology of 17 short films about Lebanon's history, and closes with An Incomplete Drowning (2026), the new feature by Larissa Sansour. In between come To the West, in Zapata, David Bim's film about a Cuban crocodile hunter trying to provide for his family; More Punk than Punk, Azeem Rajulawalla's portrait of a Pakistani punk musician; Minimals in a Titanic World by Philbert Aimé Mbabazi; and Ru Ba Ru (Face to Face) by Kapil Tanwar, about two sisters facing caste prejudice.
This year's Director in Focus is the Mauritanian-born filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako. The festival shows a selection of his films, including Timbuktu (2014), Bamako (2006) and Black Tea (2024), and the Timbuktu screening is preceded by a masterclass in which he talks about more than 30 years of work. Two new short films made with the platform's own production grant have their premieres: Asim Abdulaziz's I Broke a Vase and Fatima Wardy's White Musk.
Films in competition can win awards in four categories: documentary feature, documentary short, fiction feature and fiction short. The documentary jury is Mahmoud Kaabour, Rabih El Khoury and Rasha Amer; the fiction jury is Hania Nashef, Maike Mia Höhne and Roger Garcia. A strand called First Takes, now in its second year, shows work by student filmmakers from universities in the UAE, with a pitching workshop run with Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
From Dubai, Mirage City Cinema is in old Sharjah, about 30 minutes' drive from Deira outside rush hour, and the screenings there are outdoors, so the evenings now cooling down suit it. Screenings are booked through Sharjah Art Foundation's ticket page; the foundation lists the films as paid but does not print prices on the programme page, so check when you book. The workshops are free: From Concept to Script on 31 October and 1 November, Documentary and Representation on 7 and 8 November, and the Sissako masterclass on 7 November.