With Doha Film Institute’s (DFI) Qumra inching closer, the five big names that would lead it from the front are now all in place. Touted as Qatar’s first international film and creative industry gathering, Qumra, which will be held from March 4-9, has got two more filmmaking geniuses on board.  
The DFI has confirmed screenwriter-producer-director James Schamus and noted documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer as the final two Masters for the second edition of Qumra. With previously announced Qumra Master Lucrecia Martel unable to participate this year, Schamus and Oppenheimer will join three other Qumra Masters Naomi Kawase (Japan), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey) and Aleksandr Sokurov (Russia) at the event.
Qumra, an old Arabic word for camera, is an initiative that connects with the top order of the global film-scape, so as to guide, support and inspire emerging filmmakers of the nation, and outside it, as well. “Devised with a special focus on first-time and second-time filmmakers, Qumra consists of three sections: Master Classes, Meetings and Screenings,” the DFI says. The Masters will mentor first and second-time filmmakers during the new initiative, which debuted last March, “to support the development of emerging filmmakers from Qatar, the Arab region and around the world.”
Accredited delegates have access to exclusive events in the Qumra programme, including master classes, film screenings and networking events with local, regional and international industry guests and filmmakers. While the five Qumra Masters will participate in a series of master classes, and one-on-one advisory sessions with participating Qumra projects and industry professionals from around the world, a selection of their films will be screened for Doha audiences during the event.
Born in the US, both Schamus and Oppenheimer combine their acclaimed filmmaking careers with other roles within the industry: Schamus as a revered film historian and academic; and Oppenheimer as Artistic Director of the Centre for Documentary and Experimental Film at the University of Westminster in London.
DFI CEO Fatma al-Remaihi said, “We are privileged to have James Schamus and Joshua Oppenheimer participate as Qumra Masters this year. Both filmmakers, while very different in style, are truly ground-breaking in their fields and bring a wealth of experience to Qumra that will be invaluable for the young filmmakers participating.”
Al-Remaihi added, “We look forward to welcoming James and Joshua to the Gulf region for the first time and enabling our Qumra 2016 participants to establish a connection with these two leaders of independent filmmaking in the US. We are also very pleased to have the opportunity to showcase their work through our Qumra screenings at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), a cultural landmark for the region and the perfect setting for Qumra this year.”
A multi award-winning screenwriter, director and leading US indie producer, Schamus is best known for his long creative collaboration with celebrated Taiwanese director Ang Lee. Schamus has worked with Lee on nine films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which won four Academy Awards, and remains the highest-grossing non-English-language film in the US. He was the screenwriter for Lee’s The Ice Storm, for which he won the award for Best Screenplay at the Festival de Cannes in 1997 and also co-wrote Eat Drink Man Woman (1994).
As a producer, Schamus co-founded the US powerhouse production company Good Machine in the early 1990s, and then from 2002 to 2014 was CEO of Focus Features, the motion picture production, financing and worldwide distribution company whose films during his tenure included Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009) and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003).
In 2014, Schamus directed the short documentary That Film About Money. In 2016, he made his feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Philip Roth’s Indignation, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Joshua Oppenheimer’s debut feature-length film, The Act of Killing (2012) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, named Film of the Year by The Guardian and the Sight and Sound Film Poll, and won 72 international awards, including a European Film Award, a BAFTA, an Asia Pacific Screen Award, a Berlin International Film Festival Audience Award, and the Guardian Film Award for Best Film.
His second film, The Look of Silence (2014) had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won five awards including the Grand Jury Prize, the FIPRESCI Prize and the FEDEORA Prize. It was nominated for the 2016 Oscar for Best Documentary Film, and has received 66 international awards.
The Qumra Screenings, open to the public and Qumra industry delegates, will be presented in two sections of ‘Masters’ and ‘New Voices in Cinema’, at the MIA. The Masters screenings boast of some spectacular cinema: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, The Mourning Forest by Naomi Kawase, Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov, and The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer.