The Ismailia Festival Launches Basic Documentary Filmmaking Skills Workshop

The Ismailia Festival Launches Basic Documentary Filmmaking Skills Workshop

The Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentaries and Shorts (IIFFDS), will hold a documentary filmmaking workshop which will take place over four during the festival’s 25th edition from February 28th to March 5th. The workshop is open for filmmakers who want to learn more about the rich genre.

Egyptian critic Essam Zakaria is the festival's head, under the supervision of the National Film Festival led by Hussein Bakr.

The workshop will cover the fundamentals of short documentary filmmaking, with lectures by Daniel Cardone, Director of Programs and Initiatives at Film Independent, and American filmmaker Sisa Bueno. The workshop will be supervised by filmmaker Islam Kamal.

The workshop is open to young filmmakers and students with unique ideas for short documentary films, in collaboration between IIFFDS, Film Independent, and the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Regarding application requirements, applicants must be citizens or residents of Egypt, aged 18 or older, with priority given to filmmakers who have written or directed. The main goal of the workshop is to search for projects in the primary stage, not projects in the production stage, and selected participants must commit to attending all days of the workshop.

Interested applicants in the workshop can fill in their information in the following link. All materials must be submitted in English:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQgya5KpwSUM1j4HQjfVyvEGiexDajUWd-Mm3TgSzG8o3rug/viewform

Daniel Cardone is a writer and director. Born in Australia, he began his career working on critically acclaimed productions such as The Home Song Stories, Animal Kingdom, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2010, and the Emmy Award-winning The Pacific. He directed the segment ‘Construct’ of the feature documentary Still Around (2011). His first feature film, the powerful and evocative documentary Desert Migration, premiered at Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco, in 2015.

Sisa Bueno is a filmmaker dedicated to exploring powerful impacts within humanity while making seemingly distant stories accessible to the public. She studied both film production and interactive technologies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). Sisa spent years filming Indigenous and Afro-Latino social movements in South America and completed a short film related to the Afro-Bolivian constitutional movement called "Afrobolivianos Presente".

The 25th edition of the Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentaries and Shorts promises to commemorate the festival's rich history and previous editions, marking a significant milestone in its journey.