The Dream of Shahrazad wins in Portugal

Following soon after its being awarded Best South African Documentary at the 2015 Durban Film Festival, Francois Verster's The Dream of Shahrazad has also just won the Best Film Award in the International Television Competition of the International Meeting of Cinema, Television, Video and Multimedia - AVANCA 2015.

Celebrating its 19th Edition, AVANCA 2015 screened 142 films, and awarded films and authors from 17 countries.

The award was shared with Thierry Michel's LHOMME QUI R PARE LES FEMMES.

THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD explores recent social and political events in Turkey and Cairo through the lens of the famous story collection The 1001 Nights (aka Arabian Nights), using the fabled storytelling princess Shahrazad as a metaphor to explore how creativity and political articulation can coincide against oppression. A Turkish youth orchestra conductor uses Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade suite as a tool for political education; a young Lebanese actress reconciles her past by becoming an internet activist in Egypt; an older visual artist finds his dream of Shahrazad in the appearance of a beautiful young storyteller; an Alexandrian storyteller together with a Cairean theatre troupe meets with the mothers of martyrs of the Revolution and turns their testimonies into new storytelling performances.

The film, which was launched late last year in the prestigious Masters Section of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has already been invited to over thirty festivals in 25 countries around the world. It won the Best Documentary in Progress Award at Sunny Side of the Doc in 2012, as well as the Al-Husseini Abu-Deif/Artwatch Africa award for the best Freedom Film at the Luxor African Film Festival 2015. It was a finalist for the FIPRESCI award at Documentarist 2015, and is shortlisted for Best Documentary at the African Movie Academy Awards 2015, with winners to be announced in September.

THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD received support from the South African National Film & Video Foundation, the IDFA/Bertha Fund, the Sundance Documentary Fund, Spier Films, the CBA Worldview Fund, the Netherlands Film Fund, the European Union and Afri Docs.

It was produced by Verster in collaboration with Wael Omar of Middlewest Films; Shameela Seedat of Undercurrent Film and Television and Neil Brandt of Fireworx Media, and in coproduction with Fleur Knopperts and Denis Vaslin of Volya Films (Netherlands), Lucas Rosant of Melia Films (France), and Serene Huleileh and Reem Abu Kishek of the Hakaya Regional Network(Jordan).

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