Art & Culture

Inside ‘Made in Qatar’: The Filmmaking Community Growing From Within

BYMeriem Belhiba

November 26, 2025

The 2025 Doha Film Festival, currently underway until November 28, opened with the Made in Qatar competition, the annual programme dedicated to short films by Qatari and Qatar-based filmmakers. Presented by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), it has become the clearest snapshot of where the local industry stands each year, offering a mix of first films and returning directors who have been shaped by the Institute’s labs and grants.

This year’s lineup features ten films across documentary, animation, and fiction, all competing before a jury led by actress and director Afef Ben Mahmoud, joined by Katara Studios’ Fahad Al-Kuwari and producer Alaa Alasad. The programme’s purpose is simple: to recognize homegrown talent and track the evolution of a filmmaking ecosystem that has been developing quietly but steadily for more than a decade. As DFI CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi puts it, “Our storytellers open windows to our world… and shape a cultural legacy that extends beyond our borders.”

What stands out this year is less the competition itself and more the people behind it. Many of the filmmakers screening work in 2025 are not new faces. They’re directors who entered the scene through workshops, stayed, and are now defining what Qatari cinema looks and feels like.

Documentary director Eiman Mirghani, speaking to MILLE during her Villa 187 screenings, remembers when she first entered the ecosystem. In 2015, fresh out of university and unable to find work, she applied to DFI’s Short Filmmaking Lab “just to gain experience.” The workshop ended up marking the start of her career. “After that, I suddenly had connections. I was being hired on set. I started to understand where I fit.” But it was only after directing her first short that she felt rooted: “When the film existed, and people watched it, that’s when I realized I was part of the ecosystem.”

Her experience mirrors that of other returning filmmakers. Kummam Al-Maadeed, co-director of Al-Aqiq: Darkness of Virtuality, tells MILLE that staying in the industry requires one quality above all: commitment. “Whether someone likes your story or not, commitment finishes the work,” she says. Her next screenplay was rejected twice due to a technical detail. “I fixed it. Now we’re reapplying.” The film she is premiering this year took six years to complete through COVID-19 delays and budget limitations. “Many people would stop. You keep going, even if it takes ten or twenty years.”

Animator and lecturer Mohammed Al-Suwaidi, involved with DFI for more than a decade, says he has watched “the environment grow and the community mature.” Director Fahad Al-Nahdi sees the difference in the support available today. And for filmmaker Karim Emara, screening Baba Is Melting, the shift is clear: “From 2015 to 2025, films get stronger every edition.”

Veteran filmmaker Mahdi Ali adds a longer perspective. He recalls attending Qatar’s first independent film festival in 2000, which he believes placed the country on the regional cinema map. More than two decades later, he sees DFF as the next step in that trajectory. His new film, A Palm Branch, merges memories of pearl diving with contemporary migration stories, showing how Qatari filmmakers are blending personal history with global themes.

Collaboration runs through all of these projects. Justin Kramer, co-director of Fahad the Furious, says “real industry growth starts at the ground level.” Al-Maadeed agrees, describing a community where filmmakers share crews, advice, and resources. Director Maria Joseph relied on that same energy while making Is This a Sign?, even approaching potential actors in supermarket aisles when casting became challenging.

Together, the films in Made in Qatar 2025 point to an ecosystem that has moved beyond its early experimentation. A pipeline that once felt tentative now functions with consistency. Filmmakers enter it, remain in it, and gradually build long-term careers through it.

Asked where she sees Qatari cinema heading, Mirghani tells MILLE she is thinking in terms of continuity: new directors joining, established ones developing, and an industry stable enough for people to imagine staying. This year’s Made in Qatar suggests exactly that.

Inside ‘Made in Qatar’: The Filmmaking Community Growing From Within

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Inside ‘Made in Qatar’: The Filmmaking Community Growing From Within

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