Black Box Cinema

Black Box Cinema, which was founded and managed by film director Nawaf Al Janahi and quickly became one of the most attended pavilions of the fair since it was introduced for the first time in 2014.

Focused on presenting Arab cinema and spreading film culture, Black Box Cinema screened in its past 5 editions 84 short films to a total audience of more than 8330 viewers of various ages and nationalities.

In its sixth edition, Black Box Cinema presents a program that includes 15 short films from the United Arab Emirates and the Arab world, and 7 short films from the Republic of Turkiye, the Guest of Honor Country of Abu Dhabi International Book Fair this year. Films are subtitled in English, and admission is free to the public.

In addition to film screenings, and to promote the exchange of visions and intellectual rapprochement between the audience of books and the audience of films, the program will also present two important talk sessions. The session titled The Story Between Words and Images aims at shedding the light on how storytelling differs between the medium of literature and the medium of cinema, considering the continuous comparison between novels and the films adapted from them. In a more specialized approach, the session titled Rawi, Toward Better Screenplays gives a full introduction to Rawi, one of the leading screenwriting labs in the Arab world, offering information about its history, its benefits and success stories, and how new writers could join.