In collaboration with Mawane and El Mastaba platforms, stop-motion animated feature The Tower by director Mats Grorud will screen on Thursday, September 10, in open-air cinemas in Sudan. This comes as the cinemas have reopened across the country after a three-month pause due to the global COVID-19 crisis.

Previously, The Tower enjoyed a successful festival tour garnering seven awards from many international film festivals including; the Liv Ullmann Peace Prize and the Professional Jury: 2nd Prize for Best Animated Film at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival; the Jury Special Award and the Best Soundtrack Award at the Lisbonne Monstra Lisboa Animation Festival; the Jury Award at the Festival International du Film d'Histoire de Pessac; the Secondary School Students Prize at the Festival International des Arts Jeune Public; and Best Editing at the Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival in Trondheim, Norway. The film was nominated for two AMANDA awards in Norway presented by the Norwegian International Film Festival and the Norwegian Film Institute.

The Tower screened in many camps in Palestine and Lebanon, and launched commercially in the Jordan theatres. The film also got a series of commercial screenings in the Tunisian theatres. It took part in different film festivals, including the Cairo International Film Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival, London Palestine Film Festival, Palestine Cinema Days, Arab Film Festival in Famac, France, Busan International Film Festival, Helsinki International Film Festival, and in Cairo Cinema Days, San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival in Spain.

Written and directed by Mats Grorud, the animated film,The Tower, features the voices of Laila Najjar, Makram J. Khoury, Mohamed Bakri, Mouna Hawwa, Morad Hassan, Hanan Hilow, Saleh Bakri, and Shaden Kanboura. The crew also includes Ahlam Canaan; the Director of Arabic Dubbing, Sound Engineer and Adaptation, and the Casting. The film is a French- Swedish-Norwegian co-production that is distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions.

The film follows Wardi, an eleven-year-old girl, who lives in the Palestinian refugee camp. She learns about her family's history through stories told to her by three earlier generations of refugees.

Mats Grorud is a Norwegian director and animator who studied Animation at Volda University College. He complimented his animation career with studies in Denmark, Beirut and Beijing. Mats directed the short films Santa Klaus and My Grandmother Beijing, in addition to animation films Kaja Polmar (2006) and Piotr Sapegin's Grandpais a raisin (2006).

Today, Mats runs his own company called Nubbsjangs Productions, where he develops his own projects and teaches animation. He has also worked on several documentary projects. In 2007, Grorud started working on his debut feature animated film, The Tower, along with producer Frank Søbstad at Tenk.tv.