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Amjad Abu Alala
| Amjad Abu Alala |
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| United Arab Emirates |
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| United Arab Emirates University |
| You Will Die at Twenty |
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| Venice Film Festival (2019) |
| El Gouna Film Festival (2019) |
Amjad Abu Alala (Arabic: أمجد أبو العلا, born in Dubai) is a Sudanese film director, screenwriter and producer, who was born and lives in the United Arab Emirates. He became internationally known for his first feature film You Will Die at Twenty (2019), winner of the Lion of the Future award at the Venice Film Festival and Sudan's first ever entry for the Academy Awards in the 'Best International Film' category.
Abu Alala was born and raised in the United Arab Emirates to Sudanese parents who came from Wad Madani in central Sudan. He studied media and communication science at Emirates University before starting his career as a filmmaker making documentaries for Arab and Western TV stations. During this time, he also directed four of his own short films before making his first feature, You will Die at Twenty, in 2019.
Intent on exploring his roots and telling a Sudanese story accessible to both a Sudanese and global audience for his first feature film, Abu Alala adapted Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain, a 2014 short story by Sudanese writer Hammour Ziada.
You Will Die at Twenty was awarded the Venice International Film Festival's Lion of the Future award, the festival's prize for best feature debut, in August 2019. In September 2019 it was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.
The film was shot during the 2019 Sudanese revolution which saw the military ouster of Omar al-Bashir after having ruled the country for almost 30 years. The uprising compounded challenges the filmmakers faced from government restrictions and the need to fly in several tons of equipment due to the lack of a Sudanese film infrastructure.
As a producer, Abu Alala founded a creative laboratory in collaboration with the Doha Film Institute and produced five short films.
In 2013, Abu Alala won the Best Arabic Theatre Script Award for his script ‘Apple Pies’. Promoting Sudanese films, he has also been involved in the selection for the Sudan Independent Film Festival in Khartoum and the Arab Film Institute.
In 2021, he was selected as a jury member for the First feature section of the 74th Locarno Film Festival to be held from 4 to 14 August.
In 2022, Abu Alala participated in the Sight & Sound film polls of that year. It is held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, by asking contemporary directors to name ten films of their choice.
Abu Alala's selections were:
- 2004: Coffee and Oranges (short film)
- 2005: Birds’ Feathers (short film)
- 2009: Teena (short film)
- 2012: Studio (short film)
- 2019: You Will Die at Twenty, feature film
El Gouna Film Festival, Egypt, 2019
- Golden Star in the section for Narrative Competition: You Will Die at Twenty
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Lion of the Future Award for best debut feature film: You Will Die at Twenty
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Cinema of Sudan
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Amjad Abu Alala at IMDb
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Interview with Amjad Abu Alala and excerpts of his film "You will Die at Twenty" In German with English subtitles on YouTube
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