Assalamualaikum wr. wb.

The Madani International Film Festival 2022 (Madani IFF 2022) is entering its fifth year. We are back to celebrate the diversity of the world’s muslim. We are proud to continue to champion the spirit of independent cinema through the screenings of films from the ufuk—horizon—of Muslim communities in the eastern and western hemispheres.  

This year, most of the programs will be held in face-to-face interaction, held at Taman Ismail Marzuki. We are very happy to be able to use public art spaces such as Kineforum and the area of Taman Ismail Marzuki, which for the past two years has been in a revitalization process. We will re-experience the magic of horizons of human stories in the widescreen system of visual and sound.

Ufuk becomes the center of Madani IFF 2022’s conversations, where we look at the farthest edge of human visions and journeys through 70 films from 22 countries, and 15 talk sessions from 30 domestic and foreign speakers. Madani’s programs among others are Women of Madani, East Cinema, Madani Classic, and the screening of dozens of short films from various countries such as Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Singapore, Czech, and Austria. As many as 2,214 films have participated in the open submission program that we held from July–August 2022.

With the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology and the Jakarta Arts Council, this year’s Madani has become possible, with the Opening and Closing held offline at Epicentrum XXI. The opening film is The Perfect Candidate (Saudi Arabia, 2019) and the closing film Until Tommorow (Iran, 2022). 

This year we are also teaming up with PickLock Films with the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology to produce a documentary series called The Quest to explore Islamic civilizations and the lives of the archipelago’s muslim communities in Aceh and Bali. We are also pleased to celebrate this occasion with cinema communities in Aceh, Palembang, Sukabumi, Jember, Ambon, and Kupang, who are participating in the screening and discussion of the films of this year’s Madani IFF.

We thank all those who have given their time and contributed in various ways as advisor, supporter, curator, contributor, team, and volunteer. Let’s meet in civil—madani—spaces and conversations through cinema, beyond our horizons and boundaries.

Salaam,