13th Dubai International Film Festival

Abstract

MADINAT JUMEIRAH CONFERENCE CENTRE DUBAI DECEMBER 7-14, 2016 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is an annual eight-day event that takes place at the Madinat Jumeirah Conference Centre in Dubai. Sponsored by a myriad of local and regional partners, the festival has consistently pledged to showcase cinema from the Arab world since its inception in 2004. This year DIFF presented 156 feature films, shorts, and documentaries from fifty-five countries, including seventy-three premieres from the Middle East and North Africa region, twelve premieres from the Middle East, and nine premieres from the Gulf Cooperation Council region. DIFF also featured fifty-seven world and international premieres, with special programs such as Nordic Spotlight, a segment dedicated to films from Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway; Oscar Glory, which featured a selection of films that are official submissions to the Academy Awards; and Last Chance, dedicated to the late Abbas Kiarostami and Andrzej Wajda and featuring their respective films Take Me Home (2016) and Afterimage (2016), which were screened alongside Seyfolah Samadian's documentary 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami (2016). Aside from the usually stellar lineup of films, DIFF is also known for its nightly red carpet gala screenings and the scenic views surrounding its venues--one of which is at Jumeirah Beach, an open-air beach cinema open to the public at no cost. The DIFF also generates highly productive spaces for its participants. For example, each screening is followed by a lengthy QA and Hady Zaccak's Ya Omri (104 Wrinkles) (2016), a biographical feature about his aging grandmother, whose self-reflexivity and collaboration on the twenty-year project with her grandson makes for a compelling work exploring love and loss through her lapses of memory. Soleen Yusef's stunning film Haus ohne Doch (House without Roof) (2016), follows three siblings on their journey from Germany to bury their mother in her ancestral village in Iraqi Kurdistan. (The mother is played by Wedad Sabri, the director's mother.) Although Haus Ohne Dach is Yusef's first feature film, she masterfully captures the antagonisms between the siblings--who live very different lives in Germany--as they embark on a trip that forces them to confront questions of gender, identity, and belonging amid a highly volatile politicized backdrop, causing them at one point to lose their mother's coffin. An unsurprising yet intriguing theme at DIFF this year was that a number of films dealt with bodies of water in their narratives. As the migration crisis has escalated over the past couple of years, the Mediterranean sea has come to symbolize more tragedy than hope as hundreds of thousands of refugees attempt to cross it--often in unsafe and overcrowded rubber boats--on their journey to Europe's shores. …