Last month, we had a chance to see some interesting one-minute films made specifically for the Doha Tribeca Film Festival by fourteen very diverse filmmakers — a collection of Qataris and expatriates living in Doha, some of whom had never shot anything before. The films were then presented to the public and a winner selected by a small group of judges, including Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. (Scorsese also presented a screening of the shorts at the festival.) We’ve selected two of our favorites to showcase here. One is Sophia al-Maria’s The Racer (the eventual winner), an almost experimental and poetic look at abandoned cars and abandoned people; the other is Katherine Spry’s Just Another Thursday Night, a goofy little comedy about the absurdly high ratio of males to females in Doha.
Here’s The Racer:
And here’s Just Another Thursday Night: