RIYADH — The Saudi Film Commission signed here on Wednesday an agreement with 28 winners in the first edition of the Daw' (Light) Competition to support filmmaking with the total funding of up to SR40 million. The deal aims to produce 28 Saudi cinematic projects, including scriptwriting, and long and short films. The signing ceremony was held in the presence of officials of the Ministry of Culture, as well as media persons and a number of people interested in filmmaking in the Kingdom. In February last year, the authority announced the names of the winners in the four tracks of the competition, including full scripts, developing scriptwriting, and students' filmmaking projects. According to the results, 11 projects have won in the full scripts-short films; eight projects in full script long films; six projects under developing scriptwriting; and three in the students' filmmaking projects. On his part, the Film Commission CEO Abdullah Al-Qahtani, said: "The Daw' Competition began receiving applications for the registration and went through five phases of qualifying, nomination, and arbitration, and concluded with the announcement of the results. The production phase began with a huge funding amounting to SR40 million for these 28 projects. The Ministry of Culture launched the Daw' Competition to support Saudi film production as part of the Quality of Life Program, one of the Saudi Vision 2030 programs to empower national talents in the filmmaking industry.
