Malmö Arab Film Festival — one of the Arab Cinema Center's (ACC) partners — won the Creative Industries Award on March 2nd during the activities of the 2023 Malmö City Business Awards.
Janne Grönholm — Municipal Councilor for Culture and Leisure and the Deputy Mayor of Malmö — presented the award to the festival and its founder Mohamed Keblawi during the awards ceremony.
“This year's winners succeeded in a brilliant way in contributing to both important knowledge exchange, collaborations, financing, and business in an industry with complex co-financing systems. By building bridges between cultures in times of polarization, they contributed to the emergence of more voices and stories, as well as to the valuable development of the hub of film industry actors in the city,” explained the event's host before announcing the winner of the Creative Industries Award.
For his part, Mohamed Keblawi expressed his happiness for winning the award, saying: “Winning the Malmö Business Life Award for Creative Industry is a source of great pride for our festival. Thank you to the city of Malmö and the jury of the Business Life Awards. It's fantastic to feel that there are people who appreciate what you do. This award will give us the motivation to promote our work and be an example of serious and successful work for a better life.”
In related news, the ACC recently announced in its latest edition of the Arab Cinema Magazine that it granted the Arab Cinema Personality of the Year Award to Keblawi during the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival for his remarkable efforts in supporting Arab cinema in Sweden and Scandinavia through the Malmö Arab Film Festival.
Moreover, he received the 2021 City of Malmö's Grant for Art and Culture — an annual grant allocated to 12 creators in the fields of music, theater, cinema, and literature.
