Iraqi documentary Once Upon a Time in Iraq, directed by James Bluemel and narrated by Andy Serkis, has won the BAFTA TV Award for the Best Factual Series.
It is a five-part documentary that aired on BBC Two in July 2020.
The series chronologically charts the war, from the 2003 invasion by United States coalition forces, to the subsequent insurgency and the eventual rise and fall of the Islamic State (IS) group a decade later.
It features a wide range of people involved in the conflict, including American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Among the latter was Um Qusay, a celebrated humanitarian who detailed how she helped scores of people escape persecution from IS militants.
The programme also interviewed several journalists who covered the war, including historian Omar Mohammed, whose Mosul Eye blog documented daily atrocities committed in the city of Mosul while under IS rule.
The series humanised the Iraq war and gave a platform to voiceless Iraqis, whose stories have been buried by the destruction of the conflict.
The documentary captures the experiences of Iraqis through the chaos, poverty and sectarian wars they endured by giving them the chance to talk about their personal memories.
Once Upon a Time in Iraq is a Keo Films Ltd. production for WGBH/FRONTLINE and BBC. The executive producers for Keo Films are Andrew Palmer and Will Anderson.
Manga Productions, a subsidiary under Saudi Arabia’s MiSK Foundation, has announced that it is bringing the first-ever Saudi-Japanese anime The Journeyto cinemas across Saudi Arabia on June 17.
It has received a certificate of release and classification from the General Commission for Audiovisual Media (GCAM).
The film will be the first release to benefit from the new rules on ticket sales designed to help Saudi filmmakers. In April, the commission’s board of directors decided that local films would no longer have to pay a portion of ticket sales to the commission in an effort to support Saudi producers, artists and content makers.
Inspired by Arabian folklore, The Journey tells the story of Aws, a potter with a secret past, who is caught up in an epic battle to defend his city. The anime is a co-production with major Japanese studio Toei Animation and is directed by animation director Shizuno Kobun, whose credits include Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle. Japanese dubbing artists include well-renowned names in the Japanese region such as Toru Furuya, Takaya Kuroda and Hiroshi Kimiya, while the Arabic version has been dubbed by artists such as Abdu Shaheen, Rasha Rizq and Nassar AlNassar.
Directed by Shizuno Kobun, “The Journey” was shot using anime-style animation and took two-and-a-half years to make.
OQ Technology, a Dubai/Luxembourg-based satellite 5G IoT start-up, has won its fourth contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the first contract under the ESA’s ARTES Advanced Studies programme.
The contract was settled to OQ Technology after a pan-European tendering process that started in Q2 2020 last year under the topic Agile Network Configuration for 5G Internet-of-Things Services over Satellite”.
OQ submitted a proposal for addressing the technical design and development of a system to address advanced 5G network configurations over LEO, MEO and GEO satellites. It will lead a consortium made of the SigCom Research Group at SnT (University of Luxembourg) and Leaf Space (Italy) to perform the tasks under the contract.
OQ Technology has been working on applying cellular 5G IoT technologies and services since 2016.
OQ Technology will develop and test a state-of-the-art testbed that will demonstrate end-to-end scenarios for Agile Network Configuration for 5G Internet-of-Things over Satellites. The test-bed itself will comprise of an architecture that is able to address LEO, MEO and GEO use cases and QoS metrics comprising of a user segment, a space segment and a ground segment.
The SigCom Research Group at SnT will leverage its technical experience and contribute to this project as an academic partner. The team will be involved in defining and adapting network slicing concepts and solutions for Satellite-based IoT functions; and also design the algorithms that have high relevance to enabling 5G Satellite IoT functions. These solutions will then be implemented by OQ technology using agile software solutions on the testbed.
Leaf Space S.r.l. Italy is a high-tech company that offers dedicated ground segment services for microsatellites operators. In this capacity, Leaf Space will define the Ground Station Network Requirements and will develop the testbed that will emulate the relevant functions and behaviour of a single Ground Station (or Gateway) providing a simulation of the dataflow from the RF signal received from a satellite (downlink) to the data delivered to the network operator.
The UAE Pro League is relatively young, established only in 2008. But under the leadership of a team that is passionate about football, it has thrived, its stakeholders have seen rising profits, the clubs have a good fan following and rights to the matches have been sold around the world. In fact, while the rest of the world was in lockdown, the league continued to hold matches behind closed doors sans fans, using technology to enable efficient and seamless broadcast. It is now gearing up to open the doors to fans in the upcoming season.
“Our role is to manage and regulate the professional clubs’ competitions,” says Waleed Ibrahim Al Hosani, CEO of the UAE Pro League. “We have four main competitions – the League, the Cup, the Super Cup and the U21 League, which is sometimes called the Reserve League. So basically, we have four main competitions. Our other mandate is to commercialise these competitions and create solid revenue streams so that professional clubs can generate more funds for the stakeholders. And like most other such leagues, our biggest revenue stream is from our broadcast deals.”
The Arabian Gulf League 2020-2021 season.
Knowing how critical broadcast is to the sport, the UAE Pro League has continuously ramped up the production of its games, while also implementing new technologies to ensure its productions are on a par with international standards and therefore marketable.
“We took over the production management in season 2015/16. Since then it hasn’t been an easy journey for us, but the rewards have been great. Now we are considered to have the highest standards in the region. Any international tournament that takes place in the UAE comes to us to cooperate and coordinate, and our team helps run and manage such projects in the UAE. From the FIFA Club World Cup 2017 and 2018 to the Asian Cup that took place in 2019 in the UAE, we have helped a number of international teams and competitions,” explains Al Hosani.
“In addition to that, we have increased the rights and the value of media rights of the Pro League to more than double of what it was in previous years. This was all achieved within a short time span and is quite remarkable for a market like the UAE, where the population is fairly small. We are also one of the few local entities that have sold our rights to international media houses because of the quality of the content we have produced.”
Action from the Ajman vs Al Jazira Arabian Gulf League 2020-21 season.
The UAE Pro League’s achievements are the result of several technical and commercial initiatives. Malek Doughan, Marketing and Commercial Affairs Director at the UAE Pro League, attributes this to “a progressive approach”.
“This is especially true in how we have developed the game locally and internationally,” he explains. “We represent 14 clubs with a variety of fans that live in the UAE, so we needed to see how we could attract all of them. For this, we took a centralised approach to our communication so we could properly represent our product to the nation as well as to the clubs. We identified that within the UAE, there are a total of 4.1m residents, who we qualified as our personas and whom we wanted to bring to the stadium.
“So we undertook a centralised marketing campaign, the first of its kind in the region, and the directive of this campaign was to recruit fans, retain them and at the same time reward their activity, whether it is engaging with us on social media or watching us on TV, or coming physically to our stadium. We did a touring campaign and we went to young people. We went to schools, in line with the Ministry of Education and the Abu Dhabi and Dubai Education Councils, to introduce activities around football, to promote the leagues and also introduce a more healthy lifestyle that includes all members of the community in the UAE. The pandemic did bring some plans to a halt, but we used that time to generate more content for fans and started e-competitions to attract gamers.”
As technology and future-trend followers, gamers are a very important target audience, explains Ammar Hina.
“According to our strategy, technology and futuristic features are important because many of those technologies are now coming to fruition. What we discussed a couple of years back as impossible has now become part of the game, like the Video Assistant Referee. No one thought we could mix augmented and virtual reality with football, but we are doing that for every match now. We have been organising virtual football competitions and online gaming in parallel with our physical matches. During the peak of the Covid-19 lockdown, our online gaming took over and we got a new fan following onboard that we have to now consider for any future plans we undertake. We also have the Arabian Gulf League Fantasy game, which keeps our fans engaged and enhances their experience by bringing more fun and competitive aspects to the sport.”
The matches were played behind closed doors during the Covid-19 lockdown.
On the TV production and broadcast technology side, the team is continuously innovating and on the lookout for disruptive new solutions to enhance production. When fans could not go to the stadium owing to the lockdown, the team recreated the atmosphere for viewers by adding virtual audio crowd cheering and new VR and AR elements.
“All of this was aimed at giving our fans more value, more involvement, and also giving our sponsors and partners additional engagement and exposure to justify their sponsorship with us,” says Hina.
Al Hosani elaborates: “When Covid hit us last season, we took some time to analyse and evaluate the situation. We restructured our business plan but also made two priorities to execute these plans. The first was to ensure the safety of our players and staff. The second was to ensure the consistency of the competition to make it sustainable, so we could keep our part of the deal with sponsors. Powered by the continuous support of the top management and the UAEPL’s clear vision and strategy, my team worked on creating a protocol to go back and resume the competition safely, but we are also aligned with our government’s requirement to ensure the games were played in a safe environment.
“I am proud to say that we have successfully completed the last season and so far we have not postponed or cancelled any matches. This is a great success; the credit goes to the team and our colleagues and partners with the clubs and their staff, who showed great discipline in applying these protocols. This has helped us a lot. We did limit our manpower, our resources and equipment to maintain safety, but we made sure the quality was not impacted. In fact, we added technical solutions to enhance the viewer’s experience. We made sure that the matches ran on schedule and were not interrupted.”
Perhaps the biggest success is shown in the international takers for the productions.
The AGL awards ceremony.
“As a league, one of our key objectives is to always ensure maximum reach, whether in the local market or abroad,” says Doughan. “With that in mind, our team have been quite active in securing all these distribution deals that would allow us to get that reach. I am proud to say that the UAE Pro League is one of the few leagues in the region that has currently broadcast in different parts of the world, and in at least four languages. In addition to linear television rights in the MENA region, we are proud to have partners in Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. We are continuously working on newer packages, deals and bundles that allow us to get more potential in truly making our competition a global product.
“We don’t consider ourselves a local competition anymore. We are a global product, and we are proud to keep on trying to push it across. We are an attractive league. We have interest from global players, with international coaches coming in to be part of the league. We are trying to attract these players and at the same time attract their audience, whether it’s Brazilian players for South American fans or European players that could bring us European exposure.”
Al Hosani elaborates: “Football, being a universal sport, has a huge audience on screen. That’s why we decided to enhance the broadcast standard, because we want to create an attractive product. We didn’t let the UAE’s small population reduce our expectations. So we didn’t just set our limits to serve local talent; we included international commentators in different languages like Portuguese and other Asian languages. That made it more attractive to international broadcasters. We are also producing and distributing weekly magazines in English and Arabic languages to enhance the league coverage and bring outstanding content to our fans. That’s why we are so proud of what we have achieved. We may not have an international league but we have this appetite to do something big and we created a unique product that can attract international stakeholders.”
When stadia were closed to fans, the Pro League turned to AR and VR to offer an enhanced viewing experience to TV viewers.
When rights deals come up for renewal, a new avenue will be the opportunity to explore separate streaming opportunities.
“We are always on the lookout to increase our rights deals, and this is the highest revenue for us as an industry. This would allow us to invest more back into the product. It would allow us to create more opportunities for our players, give back to our fans and attract commercial deals. So a lot rides on these deals. However, in the best interest of the domestic rights, we also ensure our product is always visible to our fans locally, with no constraints,” explains Doughan.
“In the next rights cycle, we will identify additional packages and have separate offerings for linear TV, OTT, digital platforms and any other additional media. For this, we are continuously looking to work with new partners on the solutions and strategy side to help us in creating new avenues for revenue.”
Unlike other players, however, the Pro League has no plans to go direct-to-consumer just yet.
“D2C has been on our radar for two years, but it’s not the right time. Without alignment with partners on this project, I don’t think we can create sustainable partnerships or projects on this front just yet. It is not in alignment with our stakeholders,” Al Hosani says.
The UAE Pro League is also in charge of UAE stadia, and over the last few years has been gradually upgrading facilities to meet international criteria. When Covid-19 is fully gone, the league is preparing to welcome more fans into the stadiums.
“Our product on TV is getting better and better,” says Doughan, “and we are continuously enriching it and adding new elements to the broadcast side. We are also one of the few entities to have broadcast our finals in 4K last month. We have all these beautiful elements, like augmented reality and interactive cheering that give our players the ability to experience the ambience and the atmosphere that you would have in a stadium. At the same time, we are looking to bring our fans to the stadium and we are working towards adding a few elements that make this experience also exceptional.”
Some of the details are still under wraps. “We are going to allow fans the opportunity to appear in the match through the giant screens, but we are not going to divulge more,” Doughan winks.
“Experiences are getting more and more personalised and engaging. So with everything that we do, we have three main pillars that we concentrate on – there is TV, social engagement across all our platforms, and the in-stadium experience. With the in-stadium experience, we consider ourselves content creators. I need to give my audience a valuable enough experience in the stadium to get them to come and bring other friends too.
“Based on our CEO’s advice, we conducted an exercise where we picked the best stadia in the UAE that are also considered among the best in Asia, and benchmarked the experience of an individual fan from the time they buy a ticket and tweet about us on social media platforms, to that journey of arriving at the stadium, arriving in the parking area, ordering their food and beverage, to the actual entertainment that takes place there. Based on this, we have made some tweaks so our fans can enjoy a seamless experience. And this is how we plan to grow our fans to the big numbers and make them bring their loved ones and their friends, to make it an actual experience that they are proud of being a part of.”
Passionate about football, the Pro League team have made it their mission to take the UAE games to the world.
Other activations that fit well within the UAE Pro League’s strategic plan are also in the offing, with an e-competition that will allow UAE residents to participate in the West Asia World Cup qualifiers for the first time.
“This has not been done before,” explains Al Hosani. “When we restructured our business plans, we saw that e-games offered a great opportunity to engage with the fans and link them to football. We have a strong competition in e-gaming with FIFA – that is the start of our initiatives in esport. Government entities are interested in this project as well. Hopefully we can create a very strong platform that can increase our fanbase in the region.
“And this is just one of the projects. There are many others. Of course, things are not perfect. We don’t want to make it sound as if everything is smooth all the time. But we do have a mandate and some set objectives, and we are clear we want to remain pioneers in the region. What we want to do continuously is over-achieve.”
UFC and Hisense have announced a distribution and marketing collaboration centred on UFC Fight Pass, a major global subscription streaming service for combat sports, which will be released on VIDAA-powered Hisense and Toshiba smart TVs.
Starting from August, UFC Fight Pass will be distributed on new select Hisense TVs as well as on Toshiba Smart TVs manufactured by Hisense that utilise the VIDAA smart platform, a Linux-based open smart TV operating system that is present on products in more than 120 countries around the world.
UFC Fight Pass provides subscribers with access to live UFC events; live local mixed martial arts and combat sports from around the world; original series and historical programming; and the world’s largest fight library, featuring more than 20,000 bouts from dozens of combats sports organizations, as well as every fight in UFC history.
As an official marketing partner of UFC, Hisense branding will be featured in the world-famous Octagonat select UFC events for the remainder of 2021. In addition, Hisense will be the presenting partner of select UFC digital content distributed across UFC social media platforms in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaking about the collaboration, Crowley Sullivan, Vice President and General Manager of UFC Fight Pass, said: “We are delighted to partner with Hisense and VIDAA to deliver the incredible combat sports content on UFC Fight Pass to more fans than ever before. This collaboration is a win-win, as it will help us expand our global reach for Fight Pass, while exposing Hisense products to UFC’s fan base in key markets.”
Guy Edri, Executive Vice President for Business Development for VIDAA, added: “Partnering with UFC, the world leader in MMA, is a big step in bringing the best sports content to our VIDAA users. I believe that we can grow our businesses faster together, since VIDAA is present in almost every country in the world and UFC is becoming increasingly more popular outside the US as well.”
Hani Askar, Acting General Manager of Global Business at Batelco and Azz-Eddine Mansouri, General Manager at Ciena Middle East
The Batelco Gulf Network (BGN), a cable system that provides the GCC with regional and international connectivity solutions, has been upgraded in collaboration with Ciena, to meet the demand for high-bandwidth connectivity and capacity for Batelcos customers and international carriers.
Spanning over 1,400 km of fibre optic cables, the BGN which was launched in 2018, is a protected terrestrial network connecting the GCC to the Middle East and the world beyond through a single seamless network which is owned and managed by Batelco.
The BGN cable system, which has the capability to support up to 17.6Tbps and beyond through its main and protected routes, has been meeting the ever-growing data movement demands in the region, which are driven by the introduction of new digital services related to data, content, over-the-top (OTT) communications, IoT, 5G, eCommerce, mobile payments, and managed services.
The recent upgrade has doubled the available capacity to meet the future demands for global data transmission along with the speed, performance, reliability, and scalability that customers require. Furthermore, the upgrade benefits operators by enabling more flexibility when managing their interconnections while delivering cost-effective solutions.
Commenting on the upgrade, Azz-Eddine Mansouri, General Manager at Ciena Middle East, said: Demand for over-the-top services and high-speed content continues to surge from consumers and businesses across the GCC. Batelcos recent BGN upgrade with Ciena, a networking systems, services and software company, plays a pivotal role in meeting these connectivity needs and in helping to improve the digital experiences for subscribers in the region.
Hani Askar, Acting General Manager of Global Business at Batelco, added: Batelco is pleased to continue its collaboration with Ciena to upgrade and expand the capacity on the BGN to meet the growing demands from the market, including the increased demand on Manama-IX and Global Zone. Batelco always utilises the latest technology, software, and solutions to meet the continuous growth in capacity requirements as well as meet customers demands for exceptional delivery timelines. The BGN transports significant quantities of data and our efforts to support future requirements means that we are always ready to address any surge in IP traffic. A key differentiator of the BGN is its protection network setup which utilizes dual routes along key paths of the cable system to provide added resiliency. Cienas expertise enables us to achieve our vision and commitment in ensuring BGN is a reliable alternative to more vulnerable submarine cables, all with scalable capacity and the shortest inter-Gulf latency.”
He concluded: Batelco was visionary in investing in building the required digital ecosystem, which includes international submarine cables, Tier III certified data centres and the BGN, as having the right ecosystem in place will help the customers with their digital transformation journey while also catering to Bahrains growing digital economy.”
Lockheed Martin has received a $1bn contract to operate and maintain the ground control systems of the US militarys Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geostationary satellites.
SBIRS is part of the Defense Departments missile warning network that detects ballistic missile launches. It includes a combination of two infrared sensors in a highly elliptical orbit and five satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit.
Lockheed Martin has been the SBIRS primary contractor since the mid-1990s.
The five-year sole-source contract is for operations and maintenance of the SBIRS mission control centre at Buckley Space Force Base, Colorado, and other operations centres at Peterson Air Force Base and Greeley Air National Guard Station.
The Space Force plans to transition to a new network of missile warning satellites called Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared and a new ground system called Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE). Lockheed Martin is under contract to produce three Next-Gen OPIR geosynchronous satellites, the first of which is projected to launch in 2025.
SpaceX has launched a veteran Falcon 9 rocket on its third trip to space on June 6 to carry a massive radio satellite into orbit for Sirius XM before returning to Earth.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket, which previously launched the Crew-1 and Crew-2 commercial crew missions for NASA, landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean eight minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff.
The satellite will use its own propulsion system over the next several weeks to reach the required circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator.
The 15,400-pound SXM-8 spacecraft features a large dish-shaped mesh antenna designed to relay programming to mobile radios across North America.
The satellite has a design life of 15 years.
SiriusXM originally planned to replace two older satellites, XM-3 and XM-4 nicknamed Rhythm and Blues respectively – with SXM-7, launched last December, and the identical SXM-8 launched on June 6.
SXM-8 is owned and operated by SiriusXM as a part of their high-power broadcasting satellite constellation. The company ordered SXM-8 alongside its twin, SXM-7, in July 2016 to be built by Space System/Loral (SSL), now Maxar Technologies. The two satellites are based on the Maxar 1300 satellite bus.
The Cairo International Film Festival has opened submissions for its 43rd edition, which will take place from December 1–10, 2021.
The deadline for participants is August 31, 2021; they may submit through the official festival website for feature-length and short films and via Film Freeway for short films only.
Mohamed Hefzy, Producer and President, CIFF, said: “The concentration of Arab festivals in a period of only two months towards the end of the year has made this edition more challenging than the previous years. Given the rise in competition for premieres in the region of the most important Arabic and International films, the Artistic team began work last February on securing some of the most unique and diverse films to the festival’s programme, targeting a selection of approximately 100 films in the festival’s various sections and competitions.”
With regards to the challenges related to the Covid-19, he expressed his optimism in holding the 43rd edition in safer circumstances despite the pandemic, referring to efforts of vaccination drives across countries worldwide, including Egypt, that allow for relaxed restrictions during travel, opening of theatres, and social gatherings.
He added: “Just like we did not lose hope last year and successfully held the festival, we will not lose hope this year either. We will do our utmost best to organise a hygienically safe and artistically superior edition, while complying with all the sanitary measures and regulations set by the Egyptian Government and the World Health Organisation.”
The Cairo International Film Festival is the oldest international annual festival in the Middle East and North African and the only one accredited as Category A by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations in Paris (FIAPF), alongside 14 other festivals organising international competitions.
Ajyal Film Festivalhas announced the dates of its ninth edition, scheduled to take place from November 7-19, 2021. The event by Doha Film Institute will be organised under a hybrid format with a curated programme featuring online and in-person activities.
DFI’s annual signature event is a celebration of community and the permeating power of film for audiences across generations. There will be a special emphasis on young talent development through its youth jury programme for ages eight to 25.
Speaking about the festival, Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Festival Director and Chief Executive Officer of Doha Film Institute, said: “The ninth edition of the festival reinforces its founding philosophy: to celebrate the finest of cinema from around the world while nurturing the appreciation and engagement of youth in creative and critical thinking. Ajyal continued to set a new standard in promoting cinema, despite the challenges following the pandemic, and we will build on our positive momentum by delivering a community-oriented festival that will inspire all. Ajyal’s focus on nurturing young talent and cinematic voices from around the world fuels our belief that in these unprecedented times, the impact of film and art moves beyond boundaries and limitations, and its innate power to connect and inspire is now more important than ever. Taking into consideration that travel restrictions are still in place in many countries, we will continue to maximise the reach of the hybrid model and ensure that all safety protocols are met.”
Submissions of feature-length and short films are currently open. Films from around the globe will be screened including DFI supported films in addition to the acclaimed ‘Made in Qatar’ programme by Qatari and Qatar-based filmmakers.
OQ Technology, a Dubai/Luxembourg-based satellite 5G IoT start-up, has won its fourth contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the first contract under the ESA’s ARTES Advanced Studies programme.
Lockheed Martin has received a $1bn contract to operate and maintain the ground control systems of the US militarys Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geostationary satellites.
SpaceX has launched a veteran Falcon 9 rocket on its third trip to space on June 6 to carry a massive radio satellite into orbit for Sirius XM before returning to Earth. 
