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Both titles premiered at Cannes 2018.

Egyptian director A. B. Shawky’s road movie Yomeddine, about a leper who travels across Egypt in a bid to reconnect with his long-lost family, has scooped best film at the Arab cinema Critics Awards.

The film won the François Chalais Award and went onto tour a slew of festivals, winning the top prize in Tunisia’s Carthage Film Festival, following its premiere in Competition in Cannes last year.

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki won best director for her 2018 Cannes jury prize winner Capernaum, about the plight of a young refugee boy living in the slums of Beirut.

Nadine Labaki and A.B. Shawky’s films gained three nods each.

Two 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or contenders top the third edition of the Annual Critics Awards organised by the Arab Cinema Centre (Acc).

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum and Egyptian director A. B. Shawky’s Yomeddine have both clinched three nominations.

Following with two nominations each are Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s drama The Reports On Sarah And Saleem, about the ill-fated affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, and Moroccan director Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia, revolving around a woman in Casablanca who illegally gives birth out of wedlock.

Little is known about Nour and Amine, the two young jihadists assigned to sabotage a North African oil refinery in “Divine Wind,” a bare-bones drama from veteran Algerian director Merzak Allouache. The purpose of their mission is unclear, as is the ideology that underpins it and the socioeconomic conditions that led them to this dangerous desert outpost. Allouache’s minimalism extends to the photography, an unadorned black-and-white that keeps the focus on the emotions of his characters rather than any superfluous details that might draw the eye away. Yet this simplicity also spotlights an absence of complexity, not just in the missing political context, but within the hearts of the lonely, desperate warriors who are preparing to die for the cause. Allouache has been a festival fixture since his debut in 1976, but Stateside prospects have been limited — and will likely remain so here.

Rebuking the image of a jihadist as a hardened fighter,...