Although political events in the Arab world, especially the Arab Spring, have served as inspiration for numerous locally-produced films, few of them make it to regional film festivals.
In November, the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) excluded director Tamer El Said's film "In the Last Days of the City" for murky reasons, and the following month, the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) pulled out of a screening of Egyptian director Ahmed Roshdy's animated film "The Unknown Sweet Potato Seller," even excluding it from the Muhr short film competition.