Amman Film Festival 2024: Winners of Black Iris Awards revealed

Moroccan thriller Hounds and Jordanian-Armenian documentary My Sweet Land take home the most prizes

Winners of the festival's awards following Thursday's ceremony at the Royal Film Commission. Photo: Amman International Film Festival

Hounds, The Burdened and My Sweet Land were among the big winners of the Black Iris Awards at the Amman International Film Festival.

The Moroccan film Hounds, which is directed by Kamal Lazraq and tells the story of a father and son who become embroiled in a kidnapping assignment, won the Black Iris Award in the Arab Feature-Length Narrative Competition. The Yemeni film The Burdened, directed by Amr Gamal, meanwhile, took home the Jury Award in the same category. The film follows a couple who become pregnant with their fourth child and already facing difficulties in meeting their daily needs, decide to terminate the pregnancy.

The leads of both films also won special mentions, with Hound’s Abdellatif Masstouri awarded the Best First-Time Lead Actor and Abeer Mohammed named Best First-Time Lead Actress.

The annual award ceremony, held as part of the Amman festival, took place on Thursday at the Royal Film Commission. The event concluded the nine-day festival, which screened more than 50 films from 28 countries.

Although not ranked, the Black Iris Awards are considered the top-tier prizes on the night. The Jury Awards are selected by a panel of experts while the Audience Award, as the name suggests, is voted for by viewers. The Fipresci Award is named after the International Federation of Film Critics and is handed out at international film festivals for outstanding contributions to documentary-making.

The Audience Award in the Arab Feature-Length Narrative Competition was given to Inshallah A Boy, directed by Amjad Al Rasheed.

In the Arab Feature-Length Arab Documentary Competition, the Lebanese film Q by Jude Cehab won the Black Iris Award. The documentary delves into the filmmaker’s mother’s commitment to a Syrian all-female religious sect. The film’s editor Fahd Ahmed also won a Special Mention for his contribution.

The Jordanian-Armenian documentary My Sweet Land was awarded three prizes, including the Jury Award and the Audience Award in the documentary competition, as well as the Fipresci Award for Arab Feature Documentary Film. My Sweet Land explores the anxieties of living in Artsakh, a region devastated by conflict and also known as Nagorno-Karbakh, through the perspective of a young boy.

In the Arab Shorts Competition, the Black Iris Award was given to two Jordanian films, including Our Males and Females by Ahmad Alyaseer and The Woodland by Firas Taybeh. The Lebanese film Canary in a Coal Mine by Dwan Kaoukji won the Jury Award, whereas the Jordanian film Sukoun by Dina Naser won the Audience Award. Finally, the Black Iris in the International Films Competition was awarded to the US film The Strangers’ Case by Brandt Andersen.

“The festival's theme this year was about telling our stories, our narratives, and we did exactly that,” Nada Doumani, the festival’s director and co-founder, said. “When difficulties and hardships in life intensify, expressing oneself becomes a necessity.”

During her closing speech, Doumani noted that every film that took part in this year’s event was a winner, even if they were not awarded during the ceremony.

“The festival is not a celebration as much as it is an honouring of cinema as a means of expression,” she said. “Share your story so it becomes our narrative, and let the festival remain a platform and an incubator for every filmmaker who resists through art and affirms that culture flourishes even in difficult times. It is for this reason that our narrative, and particularly that of Palestinians, was present in this year's edition.”

While the festival is continuing its initiative to offset carbon emissions by planting trees in Jordan, it has also extended the project to include Palestine. Since 2021, the festival has planted 1,633 trees that are native to the region. Additional trees will be planted in Jordan this year as well as Palestine, specifically Gaza.