Al Massad wins Shasha Grant

LONDON -- The Abu Dhabi Film Commission has selected Jordanian author and producer Mahmoud Al Massad because the champion of their annual screenwriting competition, the Shasha Grant, worth $100,000. The gold coin will be employed to fund growth and development of his project "Fortunate Benefit." Al Massad is really a graduate from the Sundance Institute, who formerly won a global Cinema Award in the Sundance Film Festival for his 2008 documentary "Recycle." His doc "This Really Is My Picture After I Was Dead" won best doc in the Dubai Film Festival. "Fortunate Benefit" may be the story of the construction worker who's delivered to prison after you have confused inside a bad business deal. When he manages to lose his last opportunity to prove his innocence, he realizes that his existence imprisonment may be much better than the main one he'd outdoors. The Shasha Grant, that has been running for 5 years, is among the greatest production awards in the centre East. It's judged by leading film professionals and producers from around the globe. In addition to giving money to build up the winning script, the ADFC works together with the filmmaker to create the project into production. "By creating generation x of Middle Eastern filmmakers and fast-monitoring the expansion process on their behalf, the Shasha Grant remains an important a part of our pursuit to promote Abu Dhabi like a center of excellence in film development and production," stated ADFC director David Shepheard. "The richness, diversity and excellence of scriptwriting symbolized with the Shasha runners up makes me positive about the existence of Arab cinema within the worldwide scene over in the future,Inch said Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com