release date March 12 2018
The Borrowed Dress Wins Best Documentary Award at the Silk Road International Film Festival
The documentary film The Borrowed Dress by director Leen Alfaisal won the Best Documentary award at the Silk Road International Film Festival (SRIFF) marking its first international award.

The Silk Road International Film Festival screens a special selection of films from the "Silk Road", countries part of the historical network of the Silk Road ancient trade routes. The selection called "Belt & Road" includes Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean and European cinema.

The Borrowed Dress world premiered at the London International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema, where it competed for the Best Foreign Language Documentary, Best Director of a Foreign Language Documentary and the Best Editing of a Short Documentary.

Grandmother Susu (80 years old), her daughter Doaa (50 years old), and her grandchild Saad (16 years old) are forced to flee Syria after the beginning of the revolution to live in different scattered places, with the one thing left to share being their desire to reunite. The details of their personal stories and human experiences are microcosms of two stories: one of a population that has spread all over the world, and the other of a homeland that might have changed forever.

Written and directed by Leen Alfaisal, The Borrowed Dress is produced by Sarah Hassan and Alaa Alassad (Creative Media Solutions). The film stars Siham Abu Nabbout, Doaa Al Zoabi and Saad Alkuwatly. The Borrowed Dress is distributed by MAD Solutions in the Arab world.

Leen Alfaisal is a Dubai-based video producer and camerawoman working at CNN International. Alfaisal graduated with honors from the American University in Dubai, with a major in journalism and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies and documentary film.

The Borrowed Dress is her first venture into feature documentary directing. She directed her first short documentary film, Without a Frame, during university, which made it into the final selection of Original Narrative Student Short Film Festival in Dubai and Arab Short Film Festival in Beirut.
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