DUBAI — Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett is set to join the jury tasked to select the winner of the IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award during the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) in December.



This was announced Tuesday by luxury Swiss watch manufacturer IWC Schaffhausen and DIFF.



The four shortlisted projects are “Nothing Doing in Baghdad” by Maysoon Pachachi, “The Sleeping Tree” by Mohammed Rashed Buali, “Girls in the Know” by Abdullah Al Kaabi, and “From A to B” by Ali F. Mostafa.



These feature-length fiction film projects were selected from hundreds of established and upcoming directors from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.



The IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award was launched earlier this year with a cash prize of US$100,000, offering a boost to the winning filmmaker to translate his vision to the screen.



Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen, said: “For many years now we have had a passion for the cinema. Every director tells a story with his films.



At IWC Schaffhausen, storytelling is the basis — or to be more precise, part of the DNA of everything we do. Our experiences with the region’s leading film festivals in the last few years convinced us that the talent and stories from the Gulf deserve an international stage. We believe in the proliferation of new voices, and we are delighted to contribute to Arab storytelling through this Filmmaker Award.” — SG