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The North African Queer Film Festival BOUCHRA ASSOU ARTS & CULTURE Bouchra Assou, based in Montreal, QC, is a co-founder of the Dhakira Collective, a digital archive and volunteer- led research project focused on celebrating cinema, art, and music outside the Western canon, with a particular emphasis on the SWANA region (South West Asia & North Africa). For their Sprout Ideas project, Bouchra spearheaded the second edition of the North African Queer Film Festival (NAQFF), a vibrant platform dedicated to showcasing films by, about, and for queer folk of North African descent. The festival ran for over two weeks in September 2023 and included a series of screenings online and in- person at the Cinema Public in Montreal. The film program selected by the collective included 10 award- winning films, both feature length and short films, by filmmakers from the North African region and its diaspora. "All the events related to the festival were extremely well received by both our local community as well as internationally. We sold out of all free RSVPs for each screening with one particular screening hosting over 95 people (for reference the venue we rented had a 38 seat capacity). The festival also received lots of great press coverage on news outlets as well as radios and both of the festival's founders/ director of programming were interviewed by different journalists about the festival's events, its programming and philosophy." Bouchra's project aligned with the SDGs of Gender Equality (Goal 5) and Reduced Inequality (Goal 10). Bouchra also shared how their project directly impacted their community: "There were many instances of audience members coming up to us post-screening to express how they connected to the works they witnessed on the big screen during our festival. But there was one particular one that stuck with me, it was an audience member M who was deeply moved to tears by one of the films we've shown which centred a Libyan queer character and his journey. M connected immensely to the character's story as she shared many similarities with the character: both Libyan, queer and muslim and was very happy and moved to see a story like that on a big screen." Inspired by the response from their community and Sprout's support, Bouchra already has bigger goals in mind. "With this edition it has become very clear that our team needs to expand (recruit new members into the collective, map out clear roles for each member) and that we want the festival to be a yearly occurrence, something that we weren't sure we can do but given the feedback we received this year we feel very confident in pursuing the project further." SPROUT IDEAS FELLOWSHIP IMPACT REPORT 40

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