About the festival
About Arab Film Days
Arab Film Days is an annual film festival in Norway exclusively screening films from and about the Arab world. The festival launched in 2011. The 9th edition of the festival was held March 20–24, 2019 and was visited by more than 6500 audiences. The festival in 2020 was cancelled due to Covid-19, but part of the programme was screened during the digital edition of Films from the South in November–December 2020.
The 13th edition of Arab Film Days is held at Vika kino on March 15th–19th 2023.
Through screenings, debates and meetings with filmmakers from around the world, Arab Film Days is an important arena of film cultural exchange. The festival is organized by The Oslo Festival Agency (Stiftelsen Festivalkontoret), which also organizes the film festivals Films from the South and Oslo Pix.
Arab Film Days aim to:
- Contribute to diversity in cinema by presenting the best and most interesting of Arab feature films and documentaries from the past year, in addition to the classic film heritage in the region.
- To highlight current social and political issues in the region, combining film screenings with talks and debates.
- To support independent Arab filmmakers by presenting their films, inviting them to Norway and initiating meetings with Norwegian film industry and producers.
- Fill a gap in the programming of Norwegian cinemas and the larger cultural scene, by screening films that do not get ordinary cinema distribution, putting them into a larger context and present them in a frame that audience appreciate.
Key figures Arab Film Days 2019:
- 6592 audiences
- 24 films
- 7 international guests