One of the most successful Abu Dhabi Film Festival has completed. The Nine days programme came to an end after making people cry, laugh, emotional and thrilled with excellent and great cinema. The world cinema was cherished for these nine days.
One of the biggest winners of the night was the Theeb team, with director Naji Abu Nowar following up his Venice success by picking up both the Fipresci Award for Best Narrative Film and the Best Film from the Arab World award in the New Horizons section. Another double winner was Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Russian drama Leviathan, which also won at the London Film Festival. The movie added the Narrative Competition’s Black Pearl Award for Best Film and a Best Actor Award for star Alexey Serebryakov to its honours. Wim Wenders’ visually stunning The Salt of the Earth won the Audience Choice Award.
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival opened with Ali F Mostafa’s From A to B, the first Emirati film to ever open a major festival in the UAE, and the movie proved so popular, selling out the first two screenings, that organisers had to add a third to meet the demand. Further good news came with the revelation that distributor Empire had picked up the movie for distribution across the Middle East, with a cinema release slated for January 1.
Festival director Ali Al Jabri was delighted with the proceedings.
Some unlikely stars
Among the true stars of the festival was Santos de la Torre, a Mexican artist and member of the indigenous Huichol people. He is the subject of the documentary Echo of the Mountain, which describes how he was overlooked after creating a huge, beautiful mural for the Paris subway, seen by millions of people every year. The artist wasn’t even invited to its 1997 unveiling.
The team were sitting bottom of the Fifa international rankings when a UK film crew showed up to shoot Next Goal Wins, a document of their battle to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. The crew captured their first win in competitive football, a historic 2-1 victory over Tonga, but they didn’t even make it past the preliminary round. Nicky’s undeterred though, and says he’s “raring to go to 2018 – just give me the call”.
The Jordanian bedouins who star in Theeb may traditionally live a quiet life in the desert, but the first-time actors took to the red carpet and were pretty much ever-presents at the nightly rounds of parties. According to the film’s producers, their highlight, however, was spending time with camels and falcons on a trip to the Abu Dhabi desert.
Animal magic
Some of this year’s most unlikely stars weren’t even human. Tackling the heavy subject of the first Palestinian Intifada, The Wanted 18 uses talking animated cows to explore the issues in a light-hearted and impartial commentary on the passive resistance of the people of Beit Sahour. Elsewhere, the cat in Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night seems to have come straight from a course at the Lee Strasberg Institute. The cat seems to judge the tone of each of its scenes perfectly and many directors watching the film must have wished they could get their human charges to perform with such nuanced subtlety and poise.
Mutual respect
It was great to see so many filmmakers appreciating each others’ work. Among the hits with industry types was Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu, a double award-winner at Cannes, which shows how the ancient town was overrun by Islamic militants in 2012. A number of filmmakers and stars were spotted in the stalls for the second screening, including the Dior and I director Frédéric Tcheng and frequent Dardenne brothers collator Fabrizio Rongione.
Personal triumphs came for the legendary Hollywood producer Edward Pressman, who was recognised for an 80-film, 40-year career with a Career Achievement Award from the festival – and announced he’s not nearly done yet, with three big movies in the pipeline including a reboot of 1994’s cult hit The Crow.
The influential French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb was also recognised for career achievement while elsewhere, the first lady of Iranian cinema, Rakhshan Bani-E’temad returned to fiction filmmaking after an eight-year absence with the well-received Tales.
The movies
From A to B aside, all eyes were on the other regional world premieres of Egypt/UAE co-productions El Ott and Um Ghayeb, which picked up the Fipresci for Best Documentary; the UAE documentary Sounds of the Sea; and the rousing welcome given to the stars of insightful autism documentary As One.
Programmers did an extraordinary job of bagging some of the biggest award-winners from this year’s festival circuit to screen in Abu Dhabi. Among the biggest draws were Cannes Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep; the Swedish black comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Bench Reflecting on Existence, Golden Lion winner at Venice; Chinese noir Black Coal, Thin Ice, Golden Bear winner at Berlin; and Point and Shoot, Best Documentary winner at New York’s Tribeca.
Other major movies set to hit UAE screens later this year, but seen first at ADFF, include thriller ’71, James Gandolfini’s swan-song The Drop and Brit brat flick The Riot Club.
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival has made the impact on the mind of the people. Cinema is an intellectual way to convey messages to people and like every year Abu Dhabi Film Festival has conveyed the message once again.
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