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.”

Original article by Chris Newbould

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