Akhlaquna Awards 2026: Portraits of Everyday Heroes, Filmed Through a Period of Tension
Nine locations for the Junior films alone. Three private family homes turned into working sets during Ramadan and a period of regional tension. A shoot in Muscat rebuilt from scratch after airspace closures ruled out a 1507 crew trip. This is what producing the Akhlaquna Awards 2026 film series looked like from the inside.
Commissioned by Qatar Foundation's Pre-University Education (PUE) network and presented at Multaqa (Education City Student Center) on 7 April 2026 in the presence of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, the film series accompanied the 8th edition of Akhlaquna. Launched in 2017, the initiative recognises Qatari and GCC nationals whose everyday actions embody strong ethical values. The 2026 edition honoured 14 winners across four categories: Junior (Al-Baraem), Youth (Al-Yafeen), Al-Shabab, and Individual Contributions (Qatar and GCC).
The project called for a set of documentary portraits that would let each winner tell their story on camera, in the environments that shaped them.
A Portrait Series Across Five Categories
Rather than a single film, Akhlaquna 2026 was designed as a series that mirrored the shape of the awards themselves: four short documentary films, one per category, complemented by 14 individual video portraits, one for each winner, and a highlight film screened on the day of the ceremony.
Eleven Days, Sixteen Locations, Two Countries
The series took the crew across Qatar and into the GCC. Filming for the Junior category alone spanned nine locations across Al Wakra, Al Khor and Doha, in eight schools plus the QF Ceremonial Court. The Youth film was captured inside three private family homes. The Shabab film was shot at Qatar University, the Special film at the Multaqa Black Box, and the Individual Contributions film took the production across borders to Muscat, Oman, and to the Feed a Friend office in Doha.
Producing the Akhlaquna Awards 2026 Film Series Through a Period of Regional Tension
Qatar Foundation itself framed the 2026 edition around the theme "Youth and Ethics in Times of Crisis". For 1507, the reality on the ground matched the theme. The Youth shoot fell in the middle of a period of regional tension that coincided with Ramadan and with restrictions on outdoor filming. The team turned private family homes into working sets, redressing rooms and adapting on the fly to keep the winners at the centre of every frame. On the portrait shoots, scripts were rewritten between takes to match the pace of young winners reading from teleprompter for the first time.
The Muscat shoot, originally planned as a full 1507 crew trip, had to be reworked at short notice when regional airspace closures made travel impossible. Rather than cancel the leg, we rebuilt the shoot from Doha: securing the location, writing a brief precise enough to guide a single-take execution, coordinating directly with the Omani winner, and briefing a trusted local videographer to run the shoot on the ground. What was captured that day rested on the pre-production groundwork done from Doha, and every film, every portrait and the highlight reel were delivered on time for the 7 April ceremony.
Key Highlights:
4 category films, totalling approximately 20 minutes of finished content
14 individual video portraits of the winners, captured on teleprompter
1 highlight film (1 min 06 s) screened at the ceremony
Voice-over recording delivered in-house at the 1507.media studio
Documentation photography across the shoot period and the event itself
11 shoot days between 22 February and 2 April 2026
16 filming locations across Qatar and Oman
Cinema-grade camera and lens package, closely aligned to the setup used on The QF Generation series
Discover the winners and their initiatives at akhlaquna.qa.
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