Alumna Annemarie Jacir '02 Wins Eurimages Award at Berlinale Co-Production Market

By
Felix Van Kann
March 09, 2021

Alumna Annemarie Jacir '02 took home the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at the 18th edition of the Berlinale Co-Production Market for her project The Oblivion Theory last week. The project, a co-production between Incognito Films of France and One Two Films of Germany, was awarded a  €20.000 prize during the event that took place from March 1 to March 5, 2021. 

The Oblivion Theory plays in Gaza City in 1987. Ludo, an agoraphobic New Yorker, bricks herself into a penthouse apartment, becoming a secret witness and surprising agent of change as she and the Gazan people fight for survival. The Eurimages jury was “very impressed by the adaptation and relocation of José Eduardo Agualusa’ novel, into Gaza at the time of the First Palestinian Intifada.” 

The Berlinale Co-Production Market selected The Oblivion Theory among 34 other new feature-film projects hailing from 25 countries. Jacir was also on the Berlinale’s jury last year.

Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir has written, directed and produced over sixteen films. One of Filmmaker's “25 New Faces of Independent Cinema” and Variety's "Arab New Wave," two of her films have premiered as Official Selections in Cannes, one in Venice and one in Berlin. Her short film like twenty impossibles (2003) was the first Arab short film in history to be an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival and continued to break ground when it went on to be a finalist for the Academy Awards. Her second work to debut in Cannes, the critically acclaimed Salt of this Sea (2008), went on to win the FIPRESCI Critics Award, and garnered fourteen other international awards including Best Film in Milan. It was the first feature film directed by a Palestinian woman and Palestine's 2008 Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film. Her latest film When I Saw You won Best Asian Film at the Berlin International Festival, Best Arab Film in Abu Dhabi and Best Film in Amiens, Phoenix, and Olympia, and garnered a nomination at the Asian Pacific Screen Awards. It was also Palestine’s 2012 Oscar Entry.