When she approached Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera 13 years ago with a proposal for a market event devoted to films from Africa and the Middle East, industry veteran Alessandra Speciale says the festival chief “immediately understood the importance of the program.”

At the time Speciale, who’d been running a similar program at the San Sebastian Film Festival with French producer Thierry Lenouvel, recognized a gap in the market when it came to providing a platform for filmmakers working in largely underrepresented regions.

“I thought it was important to give more visibility to cinema that was not so well-known in international festivals,” Speciale tells Variety . The aim was to offer both material support to films in post-production from Africa and the Middle E

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