33rd edition of European Film Festival returns September 12

AMMAN — Under the Patronage of HRH Princess Rym, the European Film Festival (EUFF) will return for its 33rd edition in a virtual format between September 12 and 22, in partnership with the Royal Film Commission and the Greater Amman Municipality. The EUFF is funded by the European Union (EU) Delegation in Jordan and organised by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) Jordan.

The festival will be free of charge and held virtually on www.euffjordan.com to allow more people to enjoy the 21 European award-winning productions and critically acclaimed participating films, said a EUNIC statement sent to The Jordan Times.

All screened films will have both English and Arabic subtitles to bring the Jordanian and European communities together and open up a space for intercultural cooperation, exchange and dialogue.

The festival will feature the first ever Novel Adaptation workshop to be held in the Middle East, in partnership with the RFC. The workshop targets professional film script writers and aims to equip them with creative strategies and skills that will help them to write screenplays based on novels. The statement read that the workshop aims to revolutionise the filmmaking industry in Jordan and the Middle East.

The festival will also feature several workshops, master classes and Q&A’s that are hosted by the participating films’ actors and producers, in both virtual and physical forms. These workshops will facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience in filmmaking to aspiring filmmakers in Jordan. 

EU Ambassador to Jordan Maria Hadjitheodosiou said: “We are very excited to celebrate the 33rd edition of the European Film Festival, which is an excellent platform for European culture, history and traditions. We have also been able to build on last year’s experience by bringing the festival virtually to film enthusiasts and making it accessible all over the country.”

“We are looking forward to another exceptional year, with a wide variety of films, and hopefully in the future we will be able to embrace a hybrid form of celebrating European film and culture, and reach larger numbers of film enthusiasts all over Jordan,” she added.

EUFF’s closing ceremony will see the announcement and screening of the winners of its two film competitions; the Short Film Competition and the Mobile Film Competition, the former is geared towards professional film creators, while the latter targets amateurs. 

The EUFF is the longest-running foreign film festival in Jordan. It is funded by the European Union (EU) Delegation in Jordan and organised by EUNIC Jordan, together with 28 EU embassies inside and outside Jordan, five European Union cultural/language institutes and many local partners. Since its creation, the festival has been the EU’s flagship event on the cultural calendar, according to the statement.