For the third year, El Gouna Film Festival continues to build on a number of collaborations it has initiated to empower Arab filmmakers, especially outside the Arab world, and promote projects and films at various stages to enhance co-production and distribution opportunities. As part of these collaborations, the Festival will be granting an award at the Final Cut in Venice workshop for an Arab film project.

El Gouna Film Festival announced the receiver of this year’s award: Mica, the feature narrative film in post-production by Moroccan director Ismaël Ferroukhi. The film follows the story of 10-year-old Mica, who lives with his parents in a slum near Meknes. A friend of his parents', a handyman in a tennis club in Casablanca, takes him as his apprentice. Mica finds himself propelled into a whole new world which he knows nothing about, where a new life awaits him.

The Final Cut in Venice workshop is held as part of the Venice Film Festival. It provides opportunities for six film projects in the production stage by filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East, to facilitate post-production processes and strengthen partnerships between these projects and film markets. The workshop runs through three days of activities, presenting projects to producers, buyers, distributors, post-production companies and festival programmers.