Screen DIFF 2017 Day 2

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8 2017

AT DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com

Editorial lizshackleton@gmail.com

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8 2017

AT DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

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Mario Georges Haddad and Ahmad Fahmy

Empire pact bolsters Egypt ties Pan-Arab distributor Empire International and Egyptian production company Synergy Films are partnering on the release of nine features in 2018, with the aim of garnering one-million admissions.

Under the deal, Beirut and Dubai-based Empire, which is the long-time distributor of Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Sony in the Middle East, will use the same marketing strategies it employs to release its Hollywood studio titles when launching the Synergy productions.

“This marks the first time an Egyptian studio collaborates exclusively with a Middle Eastern distributor on a regular basis. It is quite uncommon for Arab studios and is usually reserved for Hollywood studios,” said Empire chairman and CEO Mario Georges Haddad.

The films scheduled for release under the accord include two comedies, Laylat Hana WaSrour, starring Mohamed Adel Emam and Yasmine Sabry, and Ahmed El Gendi’s El Ze’eb Wal Onsa, featuring Ahmad Fahmy in the cast.

Melanie Goodfellow

Editorial lizshackleton@gmail.com

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iProductions to invite El Bagoury’s The Guest

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris’s burgeoning TV and film company iProductions has boarded Hadi El Bagoury’s next film The Guest, about a dinner party that takes a chaotic turn due to the presence of a young male invitee.

Screen 2017 Arab Star of Tomorrow Ahmed Malek has signed to play the lead role of the guest, opposite veteran actor Khaled El Sawy and Shereen Reda as the host couple and Jamila Awad as their daughter.

“I can’t give too much detail on Ahmed Malek’s role as the plot

turns on the fact that the relationship between the guest and the rest of the family is not immediately clear,” said iProductions CEO Ahmed Fahmy, who developed the project. It is El Baguory’s first film since his hit romantic drama Hepta: The Last Lecture, in which Malek, Reda and Awad also appeared.

Meanwhile, the company has also started filming Gunshot, a drama revolving around a murder seen from a number of different perspectives. The aim is to show a trailer or rough-cut of the film at Berlin International Film Festival in February.

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The film is written by Ibrahim Issa, whose credits include previous iProductions title The Preacher (Mawlana), about a populist TV preacher whose honour is compromised. Karim El Shenawy, who was first assistant director on Mohamed Diab’s Clash, is making his directing debut with the film.

“One of the key aims of this film is to support and promote an upcoming generation of young talent,” said Fahmy. Ahmed El Fishawy leads an ensemble cast, which also includes popular actress and singer Ruby, Mohamed Mamdouh (aka Tyson) and Malek.

Miss Camel wins IWC award

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Haifaa Al Mansour and Brad Niemann at last night’s IWC Filmmaker Awards

Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour has won the sixth IWC Filmmaker Award, which comes with a grant of $100,000, for her upcoming project Miss Camel.

She received the prize from actress and IWC Schaffhausen ambassador Cate Blanchett at a star-studded gala event in the One&Only Royal Mirage.

Co-written by Al Mansour and Brad Niemann, Miss Camel tells the story of a Saudi teen who makes a startling discovery at her cousin’s wedding — she can talk to animals.

VR industry still asking: ‘Where’s the money?’

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Home-based virtual reality (VR) may be grabbing headlines, but there is still no business model to support the fledgling industry, said speakers at a DIFF Forum panel, ‘Innovations in VR, AR and mixed reality’.

On the other hand, augmented reality (AR) and out-of-home VR

experiences are showing promise.

“The point is that consumers still need to pay a few thousand dollars for VR gear,” said Alexey Morozov, CMO of Russia’s VRTech. “For now, location-based experiences are a nice entry point — the money is in the ticket economy or building the infrastructure for content delivery.”

Valis Studios CEO Peter Martin

added that AR still accounts for most of the content monetisation in the industry: “AR is the platform right now because consumers only need a cellphone — you don’t need to buy anything or set anything up.”

Playing Forward co-founder John Attard, who joined the panel by videolink from Los Angeles, advised VR producers to focus on

established IP. “Take a show or book that you already have and enhance it with the AR or VR experience as part of a larger brand strategy.”

The panel also agreed that the usual suspects, tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft, will be the first companies to produce headsets cheap enough to bring VR to the mass market.

TODAY

Al Hayba, page 5

NEWS Comeback kid Season two of hit Lebanese TV series Al Hayba plots 2018 shoot » Page 5

FEATURE Breaking borders What issues do Arab actors face working in Hollywood and beyond? » Page 12

FORUM EVENTS 10:00-11:00 Co-producing for the international market Location Forum room Panellists Salem Brahimi, filmmaker; Julie Billy, Haut et Court; Rula Nasser, The Imaginarium Films; Sebastien Delloye, Entre Chien et Loup

11:30-12:30 The Academy presents: women at the helm Location Forum room Panellists directors Kimberly Peirce, Haifaa Al Mansour and Niki Caro

13:45-14:15 Sound is half the picture Location VIDXB, Dubai World Trade Centre, Zaabeel hall 2 Presenter Richard Lackey, UBMS

14:00-15:00 Money talks: the state of global film finance Location Forum room Panellists Jonathan Deckter, Voltage Pictures; Bertrand Faivre, Le Bureau; Peter Trinh, ICM Partners; Mohamed Hefzy, Film Clinic

14:00-15:00 The Academy presents: next generation masterclass Location Press conference room Panellists directors Kimberly Peirce, Haifaa Al Mansour, Niki Caro and Ampas president John Bailey

15:00-15:30 Short & sweet with Vimeo Location VIDXB, Dubai World Trade Centre, Zaabeel hall 2 Presenter Jeffrey Bowers, Vimeo

15:30-16:30 Equity crowdfunding Location Forum room Panellists Michael Hughes, IndieGoGo; Mychal Simka, Simka Entertainment; Danny Andrews, Image Nation

17:00-18:30 The art of cinematography Location Forum room Guest John Bailey, Ampas president

World of locations worldoflocations.com Find your latest location inspiration

NEWS

Al Hayba 2 targets new-year shoot

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

A second season of hit Lebanese TV series Al Hayba, revolving around a colourful crime clan operating on the Syrian border, is due to start shooting in early 2018, producer and creator Sadek Sabbah has confirmed at DIFF. Sabbah, who is chairman of Beirut-based TV and film company Sabbah Brothers, is among a number of producers attending DIFF this year to unveil their upcoming Ramadan series.

“It will start shooting the third week of January in time for the 2018 Ramadan season,” said Sabbah. “It will expand on the history of the family but I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot.”

The company is also launching a second 30-episode Ramadan

Season one of Al Hayba

series, The Way, about the complicated life of a hotshot lawyer as she juggles family and career; and Ressort, a 15-episode thriller series set against the world of finance.

The latter is being produced to suit the requirements of the new streaming platforms.

The first season of Al Hayba was one of the surprise hits of the 2017 Ramadan season. Airing on pan-Arab, free-to-air network MBC, as well as pay-TV channels ART and MTV Lebanon, the show garnered audiences all over the region from Lebanon to the

Gulf and North Africa. “The series gave real insight into the clans that really exist in Lebanon.

We managed to create a story that is very close to our region but also had wider appeal because these lawless pockets of society can be found throughout the world,” said Sabbah.

“We had big audiences in nine Arab countries. Statistics showed that at the height of its success, 29 to 30 million people were discussing the show on social media.”

Al Hayba’s ensemble Lebanese cast included Taim Hasan, Nadine Nassib Njeim, Abdo Chahine and veteran actress Mona Wassef.

Wassef is also at DIFF for the anniversary screening of Moustapha Akkad’s classic picture The Message, in which she starred.

Writers’ Room pens new chapter for UK, Arab talent

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

DIFF is teaming with the British Film Institute (BFI) and the British Council on The Writers’ Room, a new initiative that aims to foster creative exchange between the UK and the Arab world.

Launching today at DIFF, the three-day forum brings together three writers from the UK and three from the Arab world, who will take part in script workshops,

a masterclass and discuss their scripts with UK and Arab industry professionals.

“This is a cultural exchange, not a business initiative. It’s about bringing creative people together to develop strong projects and ideas,” said Dubai Film Connection director Jane Williams. “It is also about how to find an audience for these projects outside their home territory.”

The three UK writers are Sara Ishaq with The Station, Omar ElKhairy with Dress Circle and Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore with Heaven Is Dark. The three Arab writers are the UAE’s Amal AlAgroobi with Doris Domestic, Jordan’s Darin Sallam with Farha and Egypt’s Hala Lotfy with The Bridge.

UK-based industry professionals involved in the initiative include script editor Ludwik

Smolski and Artificial Eye head of acquisitions Cate Kane. Professionals from the Arab world include Lebanese filmmaker Ghassan Salhab and Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy.

The initiative is being held as part of a UK Spotlight at DIFF, celebrating the UK/UAE 2017 Year of Culture, which also includes a Best of British day in the Forum.

MAD takes first steps on The Journey Arab distributor and promotional agency MAD Solutions has signed pan-Arab rights for Baghdad suicide-attack drama The Journey ahead of its screening in DIFF’s Muhr Feature competition.

The company has taken panArab rights excluding Iraq, where the film is being handled by the Iraqi Independent Film Centre.

“It will be released in Iraq by Christmas and then the rest of the Arab world in January and February,” said MAD founder and CEO Alaa Karkouti.

Iraqi director Mohamed Al-Daradji’s film is about a man and woman brought together at a Baghdad train station by the latter’s plan to blow herself up in a suicide attack. It had its world premiere at Toronto.

The Journey is among 28 DIFF titles being handled internationally by MAD. The Cairo-based company also has Muhr Short competition titles A Drowning Man, Bonboné, Rupture, Astra and City Souls.

Other recent pick-ups include Egyptian director Ahmed Amer’s Kiss Me Not and Algerian director Karim Moussaoui’s Until The Birds Return, which are both playing in Arabian Nights.

Melanie Goodfellow

ONE ON ONE SAHIM OMAR KALIFA, DIRECTOR, ZAGROS

The Kurdish filmmaker tells Liz Shackleton how he explored the migrant experience and the changing role of women in his debut feature Zagros, which screens in the Muhr Feature competition

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or his first feature, Belgium-based Kurdish filmmaker Sahim Omar Kalifa chose to tell a story, which although not autobiographical, shares many parallels with his own life.

The films revolves around Zagros, a Kurdish shepherd who is shocked to discover his wife has been accused of infidelity and is fleeing to Belgium with their daughter. Believing her innocence, he follows her to Europe but starts to entertain doubts that have tragic consequences.

“I’m interested in human stories that have a political background,” says Omar Kalifa. “I come from a society where our thinking is often determined by factors such as tradition, family and religion. But how do you react when you come to a country like Belgium and those pressures are removed? The main character is

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trying to free his thinking, but he’s stranded somewhere between modernity and tradition.”

Omar Kalifa adds that he also wanted to explore the changing role of women in Kurdish society. Zagros’s wife, Havin, only escapes her in-laws with the help of her Kurdish fighter sister, whose dangerous but free lifestyle in the mountains is a big contrast to the conservative women in the village. “We’ve made huge progress, and the power of women has changed many things in our society, but there are still many victims,” Omar Kalifa says.

Born in Iraqi Kurdistan, Omar Kalifa moved to Belgium as a young man, but unlike his protagonist, settled quickly into life in Brussels, working as an interpreter and studying at the Sint-Lukas film school. His short film Land Of The Heroes (2010), won a jury award at the

Sahim Omar Kalifa

Berlinale, while both his subsequent shorts, Baghdad Messi (2012) and Bad Hunter (2014), were shortlisted for the Oscars. The nearly-100 awards won by his short films helped raise support from the Flemish and Dutch film funds for his debut feature.

Produced by Belgium’s A Private View, with Dutch producer Viking Film and Franco-Belgian Man’s Films Productions as co-producers, Zagros was filmed in Istanbul, Belgium and Greece, which doubled for Kurdistan when plans to shoot further scenes in Turkey were abandoned due to political unrest.

The cast is headed by Turkey-based Kurdish actors Feyyaz Duman as Zagros and Halima Ilter as Havin. “We were lucky that all the main actors come from the same region, so even Kurdish people will hear them speaking with the same accent,” Omar Kalifa says.

Zagros premiered at Ghent International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, and was released theatrically in Belgium last month. Germany’s Global Screen is handling international sales.

December 8, 2017 Screen International at Dubai 5

REVIEWS Reviews edited by Mark Adams madams9660@gmail.com

Fireworks, Should We See It From The Side Or The Bottom?

Reviewed by Lee Marshall

Last Men In Aleppo Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan It was once thought that powerful television footage from Vietnam would forever change how war was conducted.

Yet wave after multimedia wave of distressing images, TV footage and powerful documentaries have emerged from Syria in recent years and nothing has altered the course of this shameful proxy war.

Small surprise that Syria’s anti-Assad search-andrescue organisation the White Helmets, whose heroism is catalogued in this high-quality, staunchly vérité documentary, have come to the belief that the world has set its face against them. People risked their lives to shoot this footage; the fact that it is a tough watch seems like a poor excuse not to.

Last Men In Aleppo is a hard look at the men who shoulder the load in the rubble of Aleppo as the siege intensifies. Children may be alive when they are pulled from collapsed masonry, but they may equally be dead: the Helmets are red-eyed, destroyed, staunch, endlessly roaming the streets. It is difficult to look at the lifeless young bodies here, but equally difficult to look at the hopeless eyes of their rescuers.

There are moments when these battle-hardened men engage with normal life, such as buying goldfish or visiting a children’s playground in an afternoon full of laughter. Editing is clearly complex given the variable footage, but each emergency call and every character is successfully individualised and identifiable, and several arcs snap into the overall narrative drive.

Few casual passers-by will attempt a documentary like this, so potential audiences will mostly know its main protagonist, Khaled Omar Harrah, who became famous for pulling a child alive from Aleppo’s rubble in a moment that was seen as a symbol of hope for humanity. They will also be aware he was killed last year, so the film immediately takes a predetermined arc. Director Feras Fayyad, working with his Danish co-director Steen Johannessen, does not let that inevitability dominate — we see the city through Khaled’s exhausted eyes, while realising the story is so much bigger than one man.

It is hard to assess whether news will again overtake Last Men In Aleppo, but whatever the outcome, the work of Fayyad and his dedicated team stands as a testament to what Syria, and the world, has lost through this conflict.

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MUHR FEATURE Syr-Den-Ger. 2017.

102mins Director Feras Fayyad Production company Larm Film, Aleppo Media Center International sales DR Sales, drsales@dr.dk Co-director Steen Johannessen Producers Soren Steen Jespersen, Kareem Abeed, Stefan Kloos Cinematography Fadi Al Halabi Editors Steen Johannessen, Michael Bauer Music Karsten Fundal

One could be forgiven for assuming this clumsily titled animated feature is an attempt to cash in on Makoto Shinkai’s gender-swapping teen romance Your Name, which has become the biggest-selling Japanese anime film of all time. Fireworks, Should We See It From The Side Or The Bottom?, too, centres on a shy high-school love story with supernatural elements. It is an anime that packs a lot of cuteness into its regulation 90-minute running time, but delivers little of Your Name’s gender- and generation-bridging magic. In Fireworks, instead of the teasingly and evocatively developed boy/girl body-swap premise, we get a Sliding Doors time-travel trope that feels more laborious than charming.

The film’s bizarre title refers to an argument that recurs throughout the film, between a group of male classmates at a believably real provincial high school in an unnamed seaside town. The nub is: “Are firework rocket bursts round or flat when you see them side-on?”

There are more engaging fireworks, or at least small sparks, when the film begins to dig into the feelings, friendships and jealousies of its protagonists. Norimichi is a smart but tongue-tied boy with a tousle-haired charm, Nazuna is the pretty classmate Norimichi and his best friend, the more confident and wordy Yusuke, have a crush on. Fireworks is good on the undemonstrative nature of male friendships at this age and on how 14-yearold girls are so much more mature than their male peers — not just in terms of cool, but physically too (Nazuna is almost a head taller than Norimichi).

A mysterious prismatic globe that Norimichi finds in the sea looms large in Fireworks’ core business — which is to take a shy boy’s question, “What would I do differently if I had another chance with her?”, and grants the wish via a series of magic time-rewinds. It is a manga-style premise that chimes with the characters’ big TV-anime eyes and gurning ‘surprise’ or ‘embarrassment’ faces.

Only occasionally does a more painterly touch transport us, as when a Butch Cassidy-style him-and-her bike ride pans out against a landscape that seems painted in watercolours on handmade washi paper.

CINEMA OF THE WORLD Jap. 2017. 90mins Directors Akiyuki Shinbo, Nobuyuki Takeuchi Production company Shaft International sales Toho, a_takeda@toho.co.jp Producer Genki Kawamura Screenplay Hitoshi One Cinematography Rei Egami Editor Rie Matsubara Music Satoru Kosaki Main voice cast Suzu Hirose, Masaki Suda, Mamoru Miyano

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SCREENINGS, PAGE 14

A Man Of Integrity Reviewed by Wendy Ide

My Pure Land Reviewed by Wendy Ide A standoff between the women of the house and the men who would take the home by force is the spine of this taut, fact-based first feature. A zigzagging timeline pads out the drama and deftly delivers a satisfying character arc; meanwhile the main action unfolds over a single night, enclosed within bullet-pocked walls. Set and filmed in Pakistan, the film — which had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival — takes as its theme the land disputes that are relatively common in the country and are frequently biased against female ownership of property.

A feminist perspective and a novel location add a new angle to a story that, in many ways, follows a classic western format. The siege of the homestead, an element of blood feud and ‘defenceless’ women forced to hold attackers at bay make for a premise that would not feel out of place in a John Ford film.

A charismatic central turn from Suhaee Abro, playing Nazo, the older of the two teenage girls who must take up arms to defend their home, goes some way to counterbalancing the slightly uneven performances in the supporting roles. She is a striking screen presence.

Her petite frame and dancer’s physicality lends itself to flashbacks that show her as a diffident, uncertain child on the cusp of womanhood. Equally, she is arresting as the young woman, mature beyond her years, who stares down the hired goons who threaten her home.

The man who stakes a claim on the roof over her head is an uncle, Mehrban, who, it is revealed, has no qualms about the lengths to which he will go to get his hands on the building. By the time her uncle makes his move, Nazo has already lost her brother and father to his ruthless scheming.

The flashbacks, which are woven through the story and make up a considerable chunk of the running time, do not dissipate the tension of the central thread as much as you might expect. In fact, Nazo’s trajectory from fearful kid to warrior woman is one of the most satisfying elements of the story. Masud also shows the same event twice, from the perspective of two different people, answering some lingering questions about character motivation in the process.

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CINEMA OF THE WORLD UK. 2017. 92mins Director/screenplay Sarmad Masud Production companies My Pure Land, Bill Kenwright Films International sales Independent Film Company, mail@independent filmcompany.com Producer Bill Kenwright Cinematography Haider Zafar Editor Olly Stothert Music Tristan CasselDelavois Production designer Caroline Bailey Main cast Suhaee Abro, Eman Fatima, Syed Tanveer Hussain, Razia Malik, Atif Akhtar Bhatti, Tayyab Azfal, Ahsen Murad, Sahib Ahmad

A goldfish farmer in the north of Iran finds that his principles cost him dearly when he falls foul of the shady company that dominates the local community. Although muted in its approach — performances are stoically naturalistic — Mohammad Rasoulof ’s drama exerts a tension that builds along with the piscine body count. A few mid-section pacing issues not withstanding, this is a satisfyingly gritty addition to Iran’s tradition of humanist cinema.

With a long-suffering protagonist who is forced to endure a terrible run of luck, and numerous narrative dead ends in its labyrinthine exploration of corruption, this is a film that requires the kind of audience stamina that is most likely to be found on the festival circuit.

Rasoulof ’s status as a dissident voice in Iran — he was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to six years in prison, later commuted to one — means that, in common with all his films, A Man Of Integrity is unlikely to receive a domestic release.

Reza (Reza Akhlaghirad) is a man who refuses to cave in to the culture of pay-offs and backhanders that oil even the most basic social exchange in the small town where he has settled. Meanwhile, ‘the company’ — it is never specified what it does — has infiltrated all levels of society, including government and police. After a debt to the bank incurs a ruinous fine for late payment, the company sets its sights on Reza’s land, and life suddenly becomes a lot more difficult.

Rasoulof conveys effectively the rhythms of Reza’s life; squelching around in waders while tending to his fish, then brewing batches of covert hooch in doctored watermelons. These are disrupted by the pile-up of catastrophes and Reza looks on helplessly, a rubbernecker watching the car crash of his own life.

Without a score, and with only the most minimal sound design, this is storytelling that relies heavily on the central performances. With that in mind, it is an unexpected decision to portray Reza with a blank, almost shell-shocked impassivity. Although his stony countenance starts to make sense the more we learn about his backstory, it does not do much to draw the audience in to a story that feels a little baggy before regaining its sense of purpose in a brisk, bittersweet final act.

CINEMA OF THE WORLD Iran. 2017. 117mins Director/screenplay/ producer Mohammad Rasoulof International sales The Match Factory, info@matchfactory.de Cinematography Ashkan Ashkani Editors Mohammadreza Muini, Meysam Muini Music Peyman Yazdanian Main cast Reza Akhlaghirad, Soudabeh Beizaee, Nasim Adabi, Misagh Zare, Zeinab Shabani, Zhila Shahi

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ARAB 2017

Neilson Barnard/Getty

STARS OF TOMORROW ARAB 2017

Ahmed Malek Actor (Egypt)

The Egyptian actor is attracting international attention following breakout roles in Clash and Sheikh Jackson.

Melanie Goodfellow reports

A

“

cting chose me, I didn’t choose acting,” says Egyptian actor Ahmed Malek, who has been treading the boards in theatre groups since he was a child. “It’s a form of identity for me rather than a profession. I’m constantly working on my craft. I have an instructor who says, ‘Actors need to be like archaeologists, always digging and digging to find more layers, to be more vulnerable, to give more to the people.’”

The 22-year-old is now starting to garner international recognition for his performance as a Michael Jackson-obsessed teenager in Amr Salama’s Sheikh Jackson. The movie premiered as a Special Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year.

After appearing in a few commercials, Malek started securing parts in Egyptian TV dramas such as ElGamaah, about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and melodrama Story Of Hayah.

Malek then moved into films, with appearances in two mainstream local titles: high-school comedy The Fourth Generation and romantic comedy Ahwak, in 2015. He followed these with back-to-back roles in Hadi El Bagoury’s romantic hit Hepta: The Last Lecture and Mohamed Diab’s hard-hitting post-revolution drama Clash. The latter captured the divisions in Egyptian society that rose to the surface following the 2010 revolution. Set against violent demonstrations in Cairo at the end of Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Morsi’s reign in 2013, Clash centres on 25 protesters, all with opposing points of view, who are locked up in the same police van over the course of a day.

It was a gruelling shoot in which the cast were cooped up in an eight square-metre space for the best part of 26 days. Malek describes his role as Mans, a DJ from Cairo, as one of his most challenging. “He was so different from me. I had to transform myself physically for the role. I put on weight, bleached my hair and had to get into his attitude and way of being. He also had this slangy Cairo accent, which is very different from mine,” he explains.

Malek had just three weeks between the end of the Clash shoot and when cameras began to roll on Hepta.

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“It was a challenge,” he admits of getting into a very different mindset. “The character of Karim [in Hepta] spends most his time in a hospital,” he says, adding with a smile, “You could say lying in bed for the hospital scenes was a form of recovery.”

In 2016 Malek travelled with the ensemble cast of Clash to Cannes, where the film opened Un Certain Regard. He then headed back to Cairo for TV roles in Wedding Song, about a 1970s theatre group, and social drama La Totfe’ El Shams, followed by Sheikh Jackson.

“I’ve always got my ear to the ground, and heard Amr was making Sheikh Jackson. I approached him about the part but he had another actor lined up [for the role].

When that fell through, he called me to see if I was still interested.”

The film is about the inner turmoil experienced by a strict Muslim cleric who is transported back to his difficult teenage years and his youthful love of Michael Jackson following news of the pop star’s death. Malek plays the teenager; Ahmed El-Fishawy plays the grown-up cleric.

The young actor admits to not fully grasping the fame

of Jackson, being too young to have lived through the height of the pop star’s fame in the 1980s. But this did not hinder his preparation for the role. “When I don’t have personal experience of something, I change the circumstances to something I understand,” he explains.

“So for me it could have been Eminem. I search for the essence and then change the setting.”

Currently enrolled with the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center, he spent three months learning to dance like Jackson. “I didn’t want a double. I was determined to do the dance scenes myself,” he says.

Having spent the autumn travelling with Sheikh Jackson, the actor, who speaks good English, is now talking about a number of roles, both at home and abroad. They include the lead in Canadian director Patricia Chica’s dark coming-of-age comedy Montréal Girls, about a young Arab student sent to Canada to study amid the uncertainty of the Arab Spring back home, and a new feature with El Bagoury.

Contact Ahmed Malek ahmed.malek95@gmail.com

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Manon Nammour Writer-director (Lebanon) Top talents are drawn to the short films of this dynamic Lebanese writer-director. By Melanie Goodfellow

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anon Nammour’s second short film, On The Ropes, made quite an impression on the festival circuit last year. It premiered at Locarno before touring the world, stopping off at DIFF on the way. A moody, allegorical work, it is about a dysfunctional family who meet for dinner at the wheelchair-bound father’s neglected beachfront home as their tensions come to a head.

On The Ropes grew out of a desire to explore the frustration within Lebanese society as decades of political instability put personal and national progress on hold.

“The film is a true reflection of the ongoing Lebanese situation, where nothing seems to move,” Nammour explains. “We’re always stuck in the middle, we never get a full answer on what the future holds for us. I captured this through this family, which is stuck and unable to move forward.”

Nammour and her close collaborator and producer Nicolas Khabbaz pulled together an impressive cast for the short, including actress Diamand Bou Abboud, who has since appeared in Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult and Philippe Van Leeuw’s Damascus-set Insyriated.

“They liked the script. It didn’t take too much to convince them. They saw my vision from the beginning.

I told them that they would not be attractive as characters but they didn’t mind,” says Nammour. “As a young director working with experienced actors, I had to make sure we stuck to my vision. Sometimes they would sug-

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gest things to try to help me, but I had to lay down the law and stay true to what I was trying to achieve.”

Nammour studied filmmaking at Lebanon’s Notre Dame University (NDU) from 2009 to 2012, where her desire to be a director was cemented by attending an arts festival in Rome with a first-year student work.

“One of my tutors submitted it. I very young, just 18 years old. I met artists from all the over the world, expressing themselves in so many different ways and mediums. When I came back from this magical world, I wanted to carry on making films, whatever it took.”

During her time at NDU, Nammour jumped into as many student short projects as possible, gaining experience in a number of areas, including art direction, production design and editing. This has stood her in good stead.

As well as her own directorial projects, she has also worked on art direction and production design for a number of shorts, including, most recently Bahij Hojeij’s Good Morning, about two ageing military men who meet every day for a coffee. She also works regularly as an art director and production designer on commercials.

Now Nammour is gearing up to shoot her third short, Barakat. It is about a young Lebanese man who returns from France, where he is living, to celebrate his recent marriage with friends and family back home. He goes out shopping for wedding outfits in Beirut’s his-

toric centre with his grandfather, who insists on hunting for a shop called Barakat where he used to buy his shoes. They embark on a trip of self-discovery and memories across the city. “It’s an encounter between two generations against the changing cultural and urban backdrop of Beirut, also looking at how those who leave often come back to find it changed,” explains Nammour.

Barakat is produced by Khabbaz, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Nammour.

Alongside filmmaking, Nammour has been heavily involved in NDU International Film Festival. The November event centres around local and international short films, focusing particularly on work by students and up-and-coming directors.

“I’ve been in the festival since my early days, first looking after the jury and then more recently as the chief festival co-ordinator,” says Nammour. “I love the world of short films. Through the festival I’ve met a lot of established filmmakers who still make shorts alongside features because there’s more creative freedom than when working on a feature.”

At present Nammour is writing her debut feature.

“I am in the very early stages so I can’t say too much about it just yet,” she says.

Contact Manon Nammour manon.nammour@gmail.com

December 8, 2017 Screen International at Dubai 9

DUBAI FILM CONNECTION PROFILES

In Vitro

Zero One One

Dirs Larissa Sansour (pictured right) and Soren Lind

Dir Mohamad Malas

Project’s countries of origin UK-Denmark

Project’s countries of origin Syria-Germany

Two years ago, Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour and Danish author Soren Lind brought their sci-fi short In The Future, They Ate From The Finest Porcelain to DIFF. Combining live-action footage with computer-generated imagery and archival photographs to tell the story of a Palestinian resistance group, it laid the groundwork for this similarly experimental debut feature-length project exploring some of the same themes of memory, nostalgia, loss and regional politics.

“In Vitro is a post-apocalyptic, Arabiclanguage, feature-length art film combining science fiction, live action and historical footage,” explains Lind. “The film accelerates a climate doomsday scenario already unfolding in present-day Palestine. Exploring classic sci-fi tropes such as apocalypse, human cloning and political and environmental critique, In Vitro is also a nostalgic and dystopian portrait of the town of Bethlehem throughout the past century.”

Leading Syrian filmmaker Mohamad Malas studied filmmaking at the VGIK film school in Moscow before going on to build an impressive body of work including, most recently, 2013’s Ladder To Damascus. It played widely at festivals including Toronto and here in Dubai, where it screened in the Muhr Arab Feature competition.

Malas is now developing Zero One One, a love story set in his hometown of Damascus, based on a novel by Syria’s Khalil Swaylih.

“It is about the inability to love in the time of war,” Malas explains. “It tells of the relationship between Narrange, a young woman fresh out of prison, where she was raped, and Youssef, a filmmaker who was in a deep relationship with a woman that fell through because of his refusal to migrate with her.”

The film is being produced by Malas’s regular collaborator Irit Neidhardt of Berlin-based Mec Film, the international

The feature is set in a converted nuclear reactor and tells the story of Dunia, the dying founder of a hi-tech orchard designed to reverse the effects on an eco-apocalypse, as she passes on instructions to her younger successor.

The stylised flashbacks are inspired partially by real-life events from the family history of co-director Larissa Sansour, a Bethlehem native.

In Vitro brings together collaborators from the duo’s previous projects, led by producer Ali Roche from UK art film specialist Spike Island and VFX supervisor and post-producer Henrik Bach Christensen of Redeye Film in Copenhagen. Further key collaborators are composer and musician Aida Nadeem and costume designer Line Frank.

Alternating between black-and-white and colour visuals, the film will be shot in a green-screen studio in London as well as on location in Palestine.

Colin Brown

distribution and sales company specialising in films from the Middle East and North Africa.

“This very intimate story between Narrange and Youssef reflects the political situation of Syria and the effects of the war on society and the individual,” Neidhardt says. “In order to explore the current situation the film will — like all of Mohamad Malas’s films — refer, in a cinematic way, to the country’s past and its social fabric, as well as its culture and art.

“Zero One One is another important chapter in the director’s chronicle of his country. It also is a crucial contribution to the future.”

Neidhardt has previously attended DFC with Simon El Habre and Jad Abi Khalil for The One Man Village, and as a distributor to see projects. This time she is looking for potential partners and funders for Zero One One. Louise Tutt

In Vitro

Zero One One

Producer Ali Roche Production company Spike Island (UK) Budget $1.3m Finance raised to date n/a Contact Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind info@larissasansour.com

Producer Irit Neidhardt Production company Mec Film Budget $450,000 Finance raised to date backing from Hubert Bals Fund Contact Irit Neidhardt, Mec Film irit@mecfilm.de

10 Screen International at Dubai December 8, 2017

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TALENT THAT TRAVELS, PAGE 12

The Syrians

The Unwanted

Dir Mohamed Ismail Louati (aka ismaël)

Dir Anwar Boulifa

Project’s countries of origin Tunisia-France-Germany

Project’s countries of origin UK-France

Tunis-born Mohamed Ismail Louati, a multi-disciplinary artist who goes by the lower-case name of ismaël, spends much of his creative and theoretical energies exploring geographical issues — and the identity questions that come with all that.

“Real space and virtual space, borders, migratory and displacement movements, ancestral and contemporary nomadism, centre and margin are the main themes of my visual and written works,” explains Louati. His new documentary feature project, The Syrians (formerly Refugees) presents a series of intimate portraits of Syrians living in Lebanon, a country where one in five people is a Syrian refugee, wandering in the fields and streets, living in garages and abandoned habitats.

“The main issue for me was to find a way to think with images and sounds about the complexity of the Syrians’ situation in Lebanon,” he explains. “The

UK-born filmmaker and published poet Anwar Boulifa — one of this year’s Screen International UK and Ireland Stars of Tomorrow — is at DFC with his featurelength debut The Unwanted. His first foray into drama, A Short Guide to ReEntry, won the Bill Douglas award and the audience award at Glasgow Short Film Festival in 2016. It was shot in a neorealist style with long takes and a cast of mostly non-professionals who were encouraged to improvise. Many of those stylistic hallmarks will be on display in The Unwanted, the first time Boulifa will be making a film outside the UK. The project tackles the issue of illegal abortions in Morocco, where it is estimated around 800 women a day undergo the procedure clandestinely.

“I began to think a lot about the social welfare of these women,” says Boulifa. “I want to investigate this theme in terms of a tragedy, almost a modern-day fable about two characters who are caught up

documentary will be composed of various characters, narratives and trajectories, like a mosaic of situations and stories.

When put together, those stories will compose a lifetime odyssey from birth to death, passing through childhood, coming-of age, adult life and old age.”

The project began coalescing in Laouti’s mind in 2012. At that time, he had just finished his previous documentary Babylon, co-directed with Youssef Chebbi and Ala Eddine Slim, and the massive displacement of Syrians brought about by the country’s civil war had just started.

The Syrians secured two development grants in 2014, one from the IDFA Bertha Fund and another from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the same year Louati first travelled to Lebanon.

He has now started shooting his mosaic as a Tunisia-France-Germany co-production.

Colin Brown

in a world where there are no easy answers or quick solutions. They want to get rid of a baby, but it comes at a price, both in a material and spiritual sense.

“I have a bigger canvas to play with on a feature film,” he adds. “I am able to tackle weightier subjects than in my previous shorts. I’ve always been interested in outsiders and those that live on the margins of society.”

The producer is Bertrand Faivre, founder of Paris and London-based production companies Le Bureau and The Bureau, which have a strong track record in spotting and nurturing major talent, with credits including the debut features of Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher) and Asif Kapadia (The Warrior). Boulifa has finished writing the script, which was developed at Cannes’ Cinefondation residence and financed by The Bureau.

The screenplay has now been submitted to the BFI First Feature Film Fund.

Colin Brown

The Syrians

The Unwanted

Producers Mohamed Ismail Louati, Justin Pechberty, Damien Megherbi, Willy Rollé Production companies Utopia Films (Tunisia), Les Valseurs (France), Tavma (Germany) Budget $157,000 Finance raised to date $35,500 from IDFA Bertha Fund, the Arab

Producer Bertrand Faivre Production company The Bureau (UK), Le Bureau (France) Budget $1.4m Finance raised to date $160,000 (UK tax credit) Contact Bertrand Faivre, The Bureau

bf@thebureau.co.uk

Fund for Arts and Culture, the Goethe Institute Lebanon, Utopia Films, Les Valseurs, Tavma Contact Mohamed Ismail Louati ismael.cinema@gmail.com

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December 8, 2017 Screen International at Dubai 11

SPOTLIGHT ARAB TALENT

The travelling

players

The Arab industry is hoping Walt Disney’s live-action production of Aladdin is its flying carpet to a whole new world of opportunity and screen identity in Hollywood. Colin Brown reports

A

rab social media lit up the moment the cast and crew of Walt Disney’s Aladdin touched down in Jordan in early November to start filming amid the desert moonscapes of Wadi Rum. There were retweeted sightings of star Will Smith having dinner at the Royal Yacht Club in Aqaba and a group photo taken outside Petra was instantly shared.

Lost, however, was any mention of the two actual ‘Middle Eastern’ leads themselves or any of the other charismatic Arab co-stars. Disney is banking on changing this once the global marketing goes into overdrive for the film’s eventual release. So too is the entire Arab film community. Arab professionals want to see a new generation of internationally recognised stars from the region being sought out for roles that stretch beyond the villain/victim stereotype.

With so much riding on Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of the 1992 animation, it is not surprising the protracted casting process attracted attention. The call went out for actors, aged 18-25, who could sing, ideally dance and look the part across London, Cairo, Mumbai and Abu Dhabi earlier this year. Although the original story was set in China, Aladdin is commonly associated with The Thousand And One Nights, a collection of Arab and Indian folk tales in which the invented city of Agrabah blends references from across Central Asia.

The actors cast as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine do not hail directly from the Arab or Indian world, although both can claim strong familial ties to those heritages. Mena Massoud is a Canadian actor who left Egypt with his Coptic Christian family when he was three; Naomi Scott is a London-born actress/singer whose mother is a Gujarati Indian born in Uganda. The supporting cast includes Iranian-American actor Navid Negah-

‘The question of Arab screen representation is one that involves public and private funders as much as it does agents and managers’ Partho Sen-Gupta, filmmaker

ban; Marwan Kenzari, a Dutch actor born to Tunisian immigrants; Numan Acar, a Turkey-born German actor; and Nasim Pedrad, a Tehran-born comedian who left her birth country for California when she was two and became the first Iranian to join the troupe at Saturday Night Live.

Welcome to the multi-ethnic, globespanning, cross-cultural reality of contemporary Middle Eastern performers.

Confronting stereotypes Writer/director Partho Sen-Gupta is now shooting Slam, an Australia-France co-production, in Sydney. He is a Mumbai-born filmmaker who lives and works in Sydney, and the film is about what happens to an Australian-Palestinian family living in the city’s peaceful western suburbs when the daughter goes missing amid speculation she has joined Isis. It features three Arab actors in prominent roles. Adam Bakri, the New York-based Palestinian who achieved international recognition in the Oscarnominated Omar; Darina Al Joundi, the Lebanon-born French stage actress whose résumé includes, like so many of her acting peers, a named role in Homeland; and Abbey Aziz, an Arab-Australian who has also worked in Los Angeles.

“Initially, as we were developing Slam

12 Screen International at Dubai December 8, 2017

The cast and crew of Disney’s Aladdin outside Petra. The film could be a platform for Middle Eastern talent to break out internationally

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Partho Sen-Gupta, pictured on the Sydney set of Slam, looked to cast an international Arab actor after securing investment from Dubai

at a lower-budget level as an Australianonly financed film, we were focused on local Arab-descent actors,” recalls SenGupta. “The Australian film industry is, however, a small one and there was only a small pool of Arab actors in our required age range. While we were exploring these possibilities, France’s federal film agency, CNC, attached to the production and we secured an Arab investor from Dubai, which necessitated a scaling up and the casting of an international Arab actor.”

Sen-Gupta is at pains to take audiences beyond easy Arab caricatures. “Arab actors in particular suffer from being typecast, often as ‘terrorists’,” says SenGupta. “This stereotyping is in fact integral to the plot of Slam. I wanted to portray an Arab character as multi-layered and complex. If more stories by writers and directors of diverse backgrounds received funding, then agents and managers would have more interesting work to propose to the actors they manage.

Essentially this question of Arab screen representation is one that involves public and private funders as much as it does agents and managers.”

In London, Saudi actress and filmmaker Ahd Kamel, best known for her supporting role in Wadjda, is now filming Collateral, written by David Hare, for the BBC and Netflix. Kamel plays a Muslim refugee in the four-part mini series and stars with Carey Mulligan, John Simm, Billie Piper and July Namir (the latter is a UKbased actress of Egyptian and Tunisian descent).

The drama explores the fallAhd Kamel out from the fatal

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‘The increased presence of Arab talent has not been about equality of opportunity; it’s more to do with geographical and political representation’ Rula Nasser, producer

shooting of a pizza delivery man. “The character was definitely multi-dimensional because of the great writing of David and the direction of SJ Clarkson,” says Kamel, who is based in the UK. “I believe TV is where it’s at. With all the new platforms available now, Arab actors have a better chance of landing such roles. In my case the opportunity came through my UK agent. I’m represented by an agent in London and a manager in New York. Between them, they handle my work as an actor/filmmaker. I have no reps in the Arab world. I’m not sure if that even exists there.”

Increased representation The lack of any dedicated, professionally organised Arab infrastructure to support Arab talent is a frequently heard complaint. “Do we need more and better agents, managers, casting directors, publicists, reps and sales specialists to propel the industry forward on an international level? A definite yes,” says leading Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha, whose

credits include Mohamed Ben Attia’s acclaimed Hedi. That drama won both the best first feature award and the Silver Bear for best actor at the 2016 Berlinale, although only the director has been able to capitalise on those achievements outside the Arab market. “The awards success helps the funding of his next feature,” says Bouchoucha. “However, it has not yet opened other doors for the leading actors on the international market.”

Hani Osama, the Egyptian producer of Sheikh Jackson, Hepta: The Last Lecture, Before The Summer Crowds and Warda, believes the region’s talent is being held back. “We do have a few talents in the Arab region with international value such as directors Hany Abu-Assad and Mohamed Diab, the actor Amr Waked and others. However, we have so many more who haven’t had a real chance to be represented properly. We have the talents but we don’t know how to manage them.”

It is not surprising actors such as Bakri and Kamel have established themselves outside the Arab world. “Their new citizenship is helping them to have a greater presence in European and international films since they satisfy the requirements of the funding points system and the spending conditions of the different funds, especially in Europe and Canada,” observes Rula Nasser, the prominent Jordanian producer whose credits include The Curve and Transit Cities.

“The increased presence of Arab talents and actors has not been about equality of opportunity; it’s more to do with the geographical and political representation of talents that the stories themselves are deciding,” Nasser continues. “Having said all that, and based on the increased demand in having Arab cast for certain international stories, the need for such a s dedicated Arab agency is crucial.” ■

December 8, 2017 Screen International at Dubai 13

SCREENINGS Edited by Paul Lindsell

» Screening times and venues are

correct at the time of going to press but subject to alteration.

paullindsell@gmail.com

DUBAI THEATRES ARENA Madinat Jumeirah

SOUK THEATRE Madinat Jumeirah

THE BEACH Opposite Jumeirah Beach Residencies

VOX CINEMAS Mall of the Emirates

THE DU VR CINEMA DIFF HQ

biological son, who has been expelled from school.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 15 Public

THE SONG OF SCORPIONS

FESTIVAL 10:00 JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

(US) Sony Pictures Releasing. 114mins.

Action, adventure, comedy. Dir: Jake Kasdan.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman.

When four high-school kids discover an old video-game console that contains a game they have never heard of — Jumanji — they are immediately transported into its jungle setting, taking on the lives of the avatars they chose.

To beat the game and return to the real world, they’ll have to go on the most dangerous adventure of their lives.

Cinema of the World Madinat Arena Press

11:00 EXTRAVAGANZA

(US) 6mins. Fiction, animation, comedy. Dir: Ethan Shaftel. Cast: Paul Scheer, John Gemberling, Will Greenberg.

You are a puppet trapped in an offensive show, performing for a clueless executive and confronted by his prejudices. Can technology change society for the better, or does it magnify our worst traits in new ways?

DIFFerent Reality (2) The du VR Cinema Public

LITTLE SPIROU (LE PETIT SPIROU)

(France, Belgium) 86mins. Adventure, comedy, family, action.

Dir: Nicolas Bary.

Cast: Pierre Richard, Francois Damiens, Sacha Pinault.

When his mother announces that he will start bellhop academy the following year, Little Spirou decides, with the help of his friends, to make the most of their last days together and to confess his undying love to sweetheart Suzette. To do this, Spirou and his friends organise an extraordinary adventure that he will never forget.

Cinema for Children Souk Madinat Theatre Public

13:00 SERGEANT JAMES

(France) Wide Management. 7mins.

Fiction. Dir: Alexandre Perez. Cast: Elliot Daurat, Eleonore Joncquez.

It is Leo’s bedtime. When his mum goes to switch off the light, the little boy thinks there is something under his bed… “Will you leave the light on, please?” asks Leo. DIFFerent Reality (3) The du VR Cinema Public

14:00 FERDINAND See box, above

14 Screen International at Dubai December 8, 2017

14:00 FERDINAND

(US) 106mins.

Adventure, animation, comedy, family, fantasy. Dir: Carlos Saldanha.

After Ferdinand, a bull with a big heart, is

15:00 THE LAST CHAIR: FRED (AL MAKAAD AL AKHIR: FRED)

(Netherlands) 15mins.

Non-fiction. Dir: Jessie van Vreden, Anke Teunissen.

Through the protagonists — the elderly Egbert living out his last days and Fred, a terminally ill ex-hippie — we experience a calm that’s rarely seen in the modern world. At the same time, we are silent witnesses to lives drawing to an end.

DIFFerent Reality (4) The du VR Cinema Public

15:30 IN CONVERSATION WITH SIR PATRICK STEWART

60mins.

Events during DIFF Souk Madinat Theatre Public

17:00 WAR TOURIST

(US) 30mins. Non-fiction, war. Dir: Emiliano Ruprah.

A war documentary with a personal perspective on

mistaken for a dangerous beast, he is captured and taken from his home.

Determined to return to his family, he rallies a misfit team on the ultimate adventure.

Cinema for Children Madinat Arena Gala

the motives behind filming conflict and an exploration about the role images play in militarising civilians.

DIFFerent Reality (5) The du VR Cinema Public

18:00 THE DEATH OF STALIN

(France, UK) Gaumont.

106mins. Biography, comedy, drama, historical.

Dir: Armando Iannucci.

Cast: Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough.

Follows the Soviet dictator’s final days and depicts the chaos of the regime after his death.

Cinema of the World Madinat Arena Gala

HUNTING SEASON (TEMPORADA DE CAZA)

(Argentina, France, Germany, Qatar, US) Alpha Violet. 105mins.

Drama. Dir: Natalia Garagiola. Cast: Boy Olmi, Lautaro Bettoni, German Palacios.

A respected hunting guide in Patagonia is faced with the education of his

(France, Singapore, Switzerland) The Match Factory. 120mins.

Drama. Dir: Anup Singh. Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Irrfan Khan, Waheeda Rehman.

A story of twisted love, revenge and the redemptive power of a song.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 14 Public

18:15 THE BLESSED (LES BIENHEUREUX)

(France, Belgium, Qatar) Bac Films. 102mins.

Drama. Dir: Sofia Djama.

Cast: Sami Bouajila, Nadia Kaci, Adam Bessa.

In Algiers, a few years after the civil war, Amal and Samir decide to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in a restaurant.

On the way there, they discuss their views on Algeria. Meanwhile, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda wander through a hostile Algiers that is about to take away their youth.

Muhr Feature Mall of the Emirates — Vox 06 Public

FIREWORKS, SHOULD WE SEE IT FROM THE SIDE OR THE BOTTOM?

(Japan) Sae Nakazawa.

90mins. Animation, drama, romance.

Dir: Nobuyuki Takeuchi, Akiyuki Shimbo.

The story of schoolchildren who finds a pretty, transparent ball with supernatural powers.

VOX CINEMAS OUTDOOR Galleria Mall

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 03 Public

18:30 ART IN THE CITY: DUBAI WALLS

52mins.

Events during DIFF The Beach Public

SHARP TOOLS (ALAAT HADDAH)

(UAE) 84mins. Creative documentary, non-fiction.

Dir: Nujoom Alghanem.

Cast: Hassan Sharif.

A portrait of one of the most influential figures in contemporary art in the Gulf, the late Hassan Sharif.

Muhr Feature, Muhr Emirati Mall of the Emirates — Vox 01 Public

THE WORKSHOP (L’ATELIER)

(France) Playtime.

113mins. Drama.

Dir: Laurent Cantet.

Cast: Marina Fois, Matthieu Lucci.

Antoine attends a writing workshop, in which a few young people have been selected to write a crime thriller and to be mentored by novelist Olivia. Antoine soon clashes with the group and Olivia, who is both alarmed and captivated by his violence.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 05 Public

18:45 69 MINUTES OF 86 DAYS

(Norway) Taskovski Films.

70mins. Non-fiction.

Dir: Egil Haskjold Larsen.

Follows three-year-old refugee Lean on her flight through Europe, for 69 minutes of 86 days.

Arabian Nights Mall of the Emirates — Vox 13 Public

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FURTHER DIFF COVERAGE, SEE SCREENDAILY.COM

A MAN OF INTEGRITY (LERD)

(Iran) The Match Factory.

117mins. Drama. Dir: Mohammad Rasoulof.

Cast: Reza Akhlaghirad, Soudabeh Beizaee, Nasim Adabi.

Centres on the corruption and injustice in Iranian society. You are the oppressed, or must join the oppressor to survive.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 17 Public

GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

(UK) Fox Searchlight Europe. 107mins.

Biography, family, historical. Dir: Simon Curtis. Cast: Margot Robbie, Kelly MacDonald, Domhnall Gleeson.

A behind-the-scenes look at the life of author AA Milne and the creation of the ‘Winnie the Pooh’ stories inspired by his son.

Cinema of the World Souk Madinat Theatre Public

19:00 THE COMMITTEE

(UK) 10mins. Comedy.

Dir: Mike Samir, Matej Chlupacek. Cast: Robert Ashe, Tricia Kelly, Steve Paget.

Set in a fictional part of England where everything is in perfect order. Chaos begins when an elderly resident paints her house pink. As the committee debates the matter, tempers flare and hilarity ensues.

affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an uncertain world.

Cinema of the World Galleria Mall Public

20:30 LIVE PERFORMANCE

60mins.

Events during DIFF The Beach Public

21:15 CACTUS FLOWER (ZAHRET AL SABAR)

(Egypt, Qatar, UAE, Norway) 102mins. Drama.

Dir: Hala Elkoussy. Cast: Menha El Batroui, Salma Samy, Marwan Alazab.

In a hot and politically charged Cairo, actress Aida and her neighbour are thrown out on the streets. Together they try to find a place to live, forcing them to confront their past.

Muhr Feature Mall of the Emirates — Vox 03 Public

MARY SHELLEY

(US) HanWay Films.

120mins. Biography, drama, romance. Dir: Haifaa Al Mansour.

Cast: Elle Fanning, Bel Powley, Maisie Williams, Douglas Booth.

The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, which resulted in Mary

Shelley writing the classic gothic novel ‘Frankenstein’.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 01 Public

21:30 LAST MEN IN ALEPPO (AKHER ALREGAL FE HALAB)

(Syria, Denmark) Danish Broadcasting Corp.

104mins. Non-fiction.

Dir: Feras Fayyad.

After five years of war, the remaining citizens of Aleppo are readying themselves to come under siege. Through the volunteers of rescue workers The White Helmets, the film tells a personal story about their daily lives, death and their struggle to keep the city a safe place to live in.

Muhr Feature Mall of the Emirates — Vox 13 Public

SWEET COUNTRY

(Australia) Memento Films International.

112mins. Adventure, crime, drama, historical, thriller, Western. Dir: Warwick Thornton.

Cast: Hamilton Morris, Bryan Brown, Thomas M Wright.

Sam, an indigenous Australian, works the land.

When Harry March, an ill-tempered and bitter man returning from the

Western Front, arrives in town, Sam is sent with his family to help renovate Harry’s outpost.

Harry’s relationship with Sam deteriorates quickly, culminating in a violent shootout, in which Sam kills Harry to save his own life. Sam is forced to flee into the outback.

Cinema of the World Madinat Arena Gala

UNTIL THE BIRDS RETURN

(France, Germany, Algeria, Qatar) MK2.

113mins. Drama. Dir: Karim Moussaoui. Cast: Nadia Kaci, Hania Amar, Aure Atika, Mohamed Djourhi, Sonia Mekkiou.

Set in contemporary Algeria: the past and present collide through the lives of a newly wealthy property developer, an ambitious neurologist impeded by wartime wrongdoings, and a young woman torn between the path of reason and sentiment.

Arabian Nights Mall of the Emirates — Vox 06 Public

21:45

MY PURE LAND

(UK) Sarah Lebutsch.

92mins. Action, biography, drama.

Dir: Sarmad Masud.

Cast: Suhaee Abro, Eman Malik, Syed Tanveer Hussain.

In rural Pakistan, a mother and her two daughters are forced to defend their family home from their uncle and his cronies.

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 17 Public

22:00

A CIAMBRA

RADIOGRAM

(Bulgaria) Intramovies.

84mins. Drama.

Dir: Rouzie Hassanova.

Cast: Yana Titova, Alexander Hadjiangelov, Aleksandar Aleksiev.

Bulgaria, 1971, under communist rule — a time when people are systematically oppressed.

A father decides to walk almost 100km to the nearest town so he can buy a new radio for his rock ‘n’ roll-obsessed son.

19:30 GRAIN OF SAND See box, right

DIFF EDITORIAL OFFICE PRESS & PUBLICITY OFFICE, MADINAT JUMEIRAH CONFERENCE CENTRE EDITORIAL DIFF dailies editor and Asia editor Liz Shackleton lizshackleton@gmail.com Reporter Melanie Goodfellow, melaniegoodfellow100@ gmail.com Reviews editor Mark Adams, mark.adams@ edfilmfest.org.uk Contributor Colin Brown, colinbrown1@earthlink.net Features editor Louise Tutt, tuttlouise@gmail.com Group head of production & art Mark Mowbray, mark. mowbray@screendaily.com Sub editors Paul Lindsell, Jon Lysons, Richard Young EDITORIAL Publishing director Nadia Romdhani, nadia. romdhani@screendaily.com, +44 7540 100 315 Commercial director Scott Benfold, scott.benfold@ screendaily.com, +44 7765 257 260 International sales consultant Raphael Bechakjian, raphael.bechakjian@ screendaily.com, +44 20 8102 0862 Production manager Jonathon Cooke, jonathon. cooke@mb-insight.com Group commercial director, MBI Alison Pitchford Chief executive, MBI Conor Dignam Printer Atlas Group, Street 26, Al Quoz 4, PO Box 14833, Dubai, +971 4 340 9895, admin@atlasgroupme.com

Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 05 Public

THE SQUARE

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Cinema of the World Mall of the Emirates — Vox 14 Public

(Italy, US, France, Germany) Luxbox.

120mins. Drama. Dir: Jonas Carpignano. Cast: Iolanda Amato, Koudous Seihon, Pio Amato.

DIFFerent Reality (1) The du VR Cinema Public

(Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden) Coprodution Office.

142mins. Comedy. Dir: Ruben Ostlund. Cast: Dominic West, Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss.

A satirical drama set around an art gallery and its latest installation, The Square. The story is a reflection of our times — the sense of community, moral courage and the

In a small Romani community in Calabria, Italy, 14-year-old Pio Amato is in a hurry to grow up. He drinks, smokes and follows his older brother Cosimo everywhere.

Through Cosimo, Pio learns how to navigate the streets of their hometown. One night, Pio sets out to prove to his brother that he is as good or better than him, but a series of events will forever change the way he sees the world.

22:15 BIRTH (WILADAH)

FESTIVAL 19:30 GRAIN OF SAND

(UAE, Bahrain) 45mins.

Music, non-fiction. Dir: Jason Carter.

A piece that mirrors the dichotomy of cultural identity in the Arabian Gulf, following the pearl divers of the area and

the music that surrounds them. Depicts the fragile way of life the pearl divers must endure.

The Beach Public

(UAE) 82mins.

Drama. Dir: Abdulla Hasan Ahmed. Cast: Abdulrahman Al Muraqab, Nora Alabeed, Ali Jamal.

A mountain village family is brought together by destiny, birth and death.

Muhr Emirati Souk Madinat Theatre Public

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December 8, 2017 Screen International at Dubai 15