DA Y
2
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 2015
AT DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com
Editorial +971 56 212 6011
Advertising scott.benfold@screendaily.com
THE LOCATION OF CHOICE FOR PRODUCTION EXCELLENCE State-of-the-art-sound stages with a built-up area of 6,049 sq.m (65,118 sq.ft) Workshops, indoor water tanks, office spaces, A 278,709 sq.m (3 million sq.ft) backlot, and a variety of supporting ancillary services
DA Y
2
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 2015
TODAY
AT DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com
Bankers argue case for film investment BY COLIN BROWN
Arab film-makers hoping to unlock the vast reservoir of regional money need to equip themselves with proper business plans that explain their projects’ audience appeal and how financiers should hope to make back their money. That was the key message to emerge from a Dubai Film Market Forum session yesterday that saw film financiers offer advice to those looking beyond just grants and subsidies. “Your projects have to be appealing as stories and also easy to understand as financing plans. Investors are willing to accept risk as long as they see the potential upside,” explained Julien Khabbaz, head of investment banking at FFA Private Bank. “The process involved in going through all that will make your movies better.” Khabbaz, who handles a network of more than 100 clients whose portfolios cross over into film, said his bank is the only one in the region with any cinema involvement. Stoking investor appetite in local movies remains a challenge, however; Khabbaz said investors look mostly at Hollywood and perhaps Europe. Even in Hollywood raising pools of money for film can be a hustle, said Michael Bassick, president and COO at Vendian Entertainment, the financing outfit behind Black Mass and Oliver Stone’s upcoming Snowden. “Investors are often taking out of one pocket and putting into another,” said Bassick. “There is a valid business proposition to be made about film as a viable investment. But you need to make that compelling case and also identify the proper candidates to approach.” When it comes to deciding which projects should be the beneficiary of that money, Bassick acknowledged it becomes a “math exercise”. “I’ll probably evaluate the financing plan for a movie project before I read the script. It’s hard to fall in love with an idea and not have it work out… we all have to ask, ‘Why does this story need to be told?’ It might have an important social message, but who is the audience for it?”
Editorial +971 56 212 6011
Advertising scott.benfold@screendaily.com
Fortress ramps up Egyptian zom-com BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW
Dubai-based investment fund Fortress Film Clinic has boarded Egypt’s first zombie comedy, Zombie Gozombie, which is set to be directed by award-winning filmmaker Ahmad Abdalla. Set in a provincial Egyptian town, the story will revolve around a zombie outbreak during a football match between the local squad and a top Egyptian team. “It will be Egypt’s first zombie comedy and marks a departure for Ahmad, who has never done a genre movie before,” said Fortress Film Clinic co-founder Mohamed Hefzy, who produced Abdalla’s Rags And Tatters and Microphone.
Film and TV investment fund Fortress Film Clinic — a joint venture between Fortress Capital Investments and Hefzy’s Cairobased production company Film Clinic — was launched in May. It has also invested in the Egyptian romantic comedy Everyday Lies about three couples examining their relationships during a wedding at a luxury Red Sea resort. The two new titles — produced by Film Clinic in collaboration with pan-Arab cinema company Al Massah — complete the 2015 slate of Fortress Film Clinic, which has pledged to invest in five to six titles a year. Other titles on the fund’s first
slate include Hany Abu-Assad’s The Idol, which screens in DIFF’s The Beach sidebar on Saturday; Sherif El Bendary’s Ali, The Goat And Ibrahim and Mohamed Diab’s Clash. “It’s mix of local films for pure entertainment and arthouse titles with international appeal,” Hefzy said. He added that the Dubaibased fund also wants to invest in Emirati productions. “The reason we set the fund up in Dubai is not just for the money. We think the UAE has a future in cinema and we want to be part of it. For now, a lot of our films are based in Egypt but we’d like to work with UAE talent more directly in the future.”
Neilson Barnard, Getty
Egyptian producer Mohamed Samir has boarded compatriot Hala Lotfy’s Cairo-set drama The Bridge, ahead of its presentation at Dubai Film Connection co-financing event, which kicks off today. Inspired by a true story dating back to 2010, the film captures Cairo’s dark underbelly through the events surrounding the death of a child when he falls through a hole in a badly maintained bridge.
Noura Kevorkian finishes shooting Syrian refugee documentary » Page 5
FEATURE Building bridges Dubai Film Connection presents 12 intimate, character-driven stories » Page 10
FORUM EVENTS 10:00 – 11:00 Breaking into broadcast: what do the regional networks want? Panellists Bilaal Hoosein, executive producer, reversioning programs directorate, Al-Jazeera Media Network; Khulud Abu Homos, executive vice-president, programming and creative services, OSN; Lina Matta, senior channel manager, MBC 2, MBC 4, MBC MAX and MBC Variety, MBC Group
11:30 – 12:30 Better together
14:00 – 15:00 How to find a producer (and why you really need one) Panellists Julie Bergeron, head of industry programs, Marché du Film, Cannes; Trent, producer, Oak Motion Pictures; Rula Nasser, producer, The Imaginarium Films; Mohamed Hefzy, MD, Fortress Film Clinic Moderator Hany Abu-Assad, film-maker Ali Suliman and Ahd Kamel, stars of Majid Al Ansari’s thriller Rattle The Cage (Zinzana), on Dubai International Film Festival’s red carpet last night.
Samir joins Lotfy as DFC project The Bridge rises BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW
NEWS Batata wraps
Panellists David Hurst, producer, Dublin Films; Christer Nilson, producer and managing director, GötaFilm; Felipe Marino, producer and co-founder, Occupant Entertainment; Georges Schoucair, producer and CEO, Abbout Productions
Kaylif wins IWC Layla Kaylif’s The Letter Writer won the $100,000 IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award at a ceremony at the One&Only Royal Mirage last night. Kaylif received the prize from actor Dev Patel. Film-maker Hany Abu-Assad headed a jury that also included IWC CEO Georges Kern, Tunisian actress Hend Sabry, DIFF chairman Abdulhamid Juma and DIFF artistic director Masoud Amralla Al Ali. Set in 1960s Dubai, Kaylif’s project follows a boy who writes letters for illiterate travellers. Alcove’s Amina Dasmal and Robin Fox are on board as producers. Liz Shackleton
Noura Kevorkian, page 5
Samir, who produces under the Cairo-based DayDream Art Production banner, said he felt compelled to collaborate with Lotfy’s film collective Hassala on the project due to the “sheer authenticity” of the work. The Bridge will be Samir’s first production since Mohamed Khan’s romantic drama Factory Girl, about an impoverished textile worker, which premiered at DIFF in 2013, winning awards including the Fipresci prize.
Samir is also developing his feature-length directorial debut The Northern Lights, about Syrian refugees in Sweden, inspired by the true story of asylum seekers who refused to leave the bus after they were allocated accommodation in a remote village in northern Sweden, far from the main cities. Stockholm-based Laika Film and Television is attached to the production. Samir will be heading to Sweden in April for a research trip.
15:30 – 16:30 In the director’s chair: Roger Michell Speaker Roger Michell, film-maker Interviewer Simon Field, producer, Illuminations Films
17.00 – 18.15 Networking session: broadcasters & producers Open to DFM and DIFF delegates Felipe Marino, Occupant Entertainment; Lina Matta, MBC; Sébastien Aubert, Adastra Films; David Hurst, Dublin Films; Paul Miller, Escape Pictures; Khulud Abu Homos, OSN; Laurent Lavolé, Gloria Films; Nitin Michael, Zee Television; Bilaal Hoosein, Al Jazeera Media Network; Farah Ben Temessek, Al Aan TV
The voice of the international film industry www.Screen Daily.com
Stars of Tomo
rrow 2015
Magazine and special supplements • In-depth feature articles and expert insight into the global film industry
Stars
TOMORR of OW 2015
Screen Inte rnational’s pick
of the hot
test acting
and filmmaking tale nt
• Special supplements including Stars of Tomorrow, World of Locations, product guides for Cannes, AFM, EFM, Toronto, and more
Online resources • All the latest industry news, interviews and reviews • 15 years of searchable archives • Production and financing database for key European territories
DA Y1
FEB SDAY, THUR
RLIN
AT BE m aily.co creenD www.S
9 30 ial +4 Editor
700 779
2631
Y 5 20 RUAR
FILM
15
Y TODA
IVAL FEST 315
INGS SCREEN38
» Page
0 100 +44 754 tising Adver
Essential festival and awards season coverage • Special awards issues featuring exclusive interviews with the talent behind the nominated films • Festival dailies for Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, Jerusalem, Zurich, Busan, Dubai, AFM, and Hong Kong FILMART
SAVE 20% off regular prices Screen International Magazine.com/save-20 Offer ends 15 January, 2016
News
MENA catches digital wave By Liz Shackleton
Growth in over-the-top (OTT) television services and other digital platforms is set to have a huge impact on content production in the Arab world, according to PwC report Beyond Digital, which was presented at DIFF yesterday. Jayant Bhargava, PwC’s head of digital media and entertainment, Middle East, said spending on OTT services is estimated to grow by 98% in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region between 2015 and 2019, compared to 18% in North America. Explaining trends that are shaping content industries globally, Bhargava added that three content ecosystems are emerging in parallel: “In addition to content created for traditional film and TV, we also have original content pro-
Jayant Bhargava
duced for digital platforms, such as House Of Cards, and amateur content on platforms such as YouTube, which in terms of time being spent is significant, especially among the younger generation. “Following these trends, all the major broadcasters are investing in all three areas,” Bharagava continued. “That push is yet to arrive in the Middle East, but it’s just around the corner.” Indeed, the MENA region
should prove fertile ground for OTT and other digital services due to its strong family demographic, which encourages media consumption at home, and the slow expansion of cinema networks, compared to other developing markets such as China. Bhargava said the MENA region has already embraced the “snacking culture” evident in other parts of the world as viewership shifts to short-form content and mobile devices. “Anyone producing professional content today needs to understand distribution on platforms other than TV,” Bhargava said. In a panel discussion following the presentation, Resolution Media managing director, MENA, Dimitri Metaxas, said: “Your future is dependent on your ability
to engage audiences through mobile devices with entertaining video content.” The report also found revenue from filmed entertainment is growing at a rate of 7.3% in the MENA region, compared to 4.1% globally. Growth in Saudi Arabia is estimated at 18.5%, but that is coming from a very low base and is mostly through electronic home video, as the territory has no cinemas. Meanwhile, overall revenue from entertainment and media is forecast to grow by 9.6% in the MENA region from 2014-19, compared to 5.1% globally, although most of that growth is driven by Africa, especially Nigeria. “Gaining an understanding of Africa is something we’d advise,” said PwC entertainment and media, Middle East, leader Philip Shepherd.
ACC to expand festival footprint MAD Solutions’ Arab Cinema Center (ACC) is expanding its activity in 2016 by attending 15 international film festivals and markets to promote Arab cinema. The umbrella organisation will kick off at International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 27February 7), followed by Berlin (February 11-21) and Filmart in Hong Kong (March 14-17). “Our goal is to expand the Arab Cinema Center to cover the world’s five continents through different film festivals and international markets, opening bigger opportunities to further support the Arab industry,” said MAD Solutions CEO Alaa Karkouti. MAD has also started a campaign to promote ACC with a hashtag #ISupportACC and a short video outlining the organisation’s activities. In addition to representing Arab companies and organisations, ACC organises one-to-one meetings and networking sessions, hosts screenings of Arab films and publishes cinema guides for distribution at each market. Liz Shackleton
www.screendaily.com
Batata
Kevorkian harvests refugee doc By Melanie Goodfellow
Lebanese film-maker Noura Kevorkian has wrapped shooting on her feature-length documentary Batata, capturing the lives of Syrian migrant potato pickers turned refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The project scooped one of Dubai Film Connection’s top $25,000 prizes when it was presented at the co-financing event in 2012. Kevorkian will be at DIFF this year for the MENA premiere of her experimental work 23 Kilometres, about an elderly Lebanese man suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The film-maker said her origi-
nal intention for Batata, which means potato in Arabic, was to explore the tense yet close-knit relationship between Lebanese and Syrian citizens living along the border. It tracks the lives of Syrian migrant workers, who have travelled to Lebanon for the potato harvest for nearly 30 years, and their Lebanese Christian employer. The outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, however, changed the course of the film. “When the Arab Spring began, the film started to change. It has become about Syrian migrant workers who over the last four years have become Syrian refugees,” said Kevorkian. “It is a cinéma vérité work about their
lives and experiences. I have lived with my characters — on and off — for more than four years, sleeping in their tents, getting to know them. Babies have been born, people have died while the war continues in the backdrop.” Toronto-based Paul Scherzer of Six Island Productions is producing the film. Duraid Munajim, a Toronto-based film-maker who worked on The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, is attached as cinematographer. In addition to the DFC award, the film also won a completion grant from Doha Film Institute. Kevorkian will start post-production on the film in early 2016.
DIFF picks Dubai’s programmers look beyond the world premieres and red-carpet galas
A Decent Man Directed by France’s Emmanuel Finkiel, A Decent Man stars Nicolas Duvauchelle as a depressed loser whose life gets a whole lot worse when he is mugged and wrongly identifies an Arab man as his attacker. “The film tackles racism in a subtle and intelligent way and, in a broader sense, it looks at issues like racial profiling,” says Cinema of the World director Nashen Moodley. “Duvauchelle delivers a fantastic performance.” Finkiel’s credits include Voyages (1999), which won two prizes at France’s Cesar Awards, and Nowhere Promised Land (2008), which won best cinematography at Shanghai International Film Festival.
Let them come The directorial debut of producer Salem Brahimi, who regularly works with CostaGavras, Let Them Come is based on Arezki Mellal’s novel about a family affected by a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in 1990s Algeria. Rachida Brakni, known in France for her theatre work, heads the cast along with Amazigh Kateb. “The actors are amazing,” says Arab Programme director Antoine Khalife. “The film is political, dark and extremely relevant. In the early ’90s we thought the problem with Islamists was finished, but now we see it was just the beginning.” The film, which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, is screening in DIFF’s Muhr Feature competition.
December 11, 2015 Screen International at Dubai 5
Reviews Reviews edited by Fionnuala Halligan finn.halligan@screendaily.com
The Idol Reviewed by Tim Grierson
Mustang Reviewed by Tim Grierson In Mustang, what begins as a playful look at five young women’s rebellion against their strict upbringing soon becomes something more stirring and emotional. Firsttime feature director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has crafted a story of female empowerment that is attuned to the buoyancy of adolescence, but she is also deeply critical of a modern Turkish patriarchy in which women still struggle to be equal citizens. Buoyed by a cast led by appealing newcomer Günes Nezihe Sensoy, Mustang is a deceptively simple tale bearing an urgent message. The story takes place in a small Turkish community where Lale (Sensoy), the youngest of five sisters, narrates what happened after a neighbour mistakenly confused their harmless goofing-around with a bunch of boys as sexual deviancy. The sisters’ parents have been dead for a decade, and their overly protective uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) decides these girls have too much freedom, forbidding them to leave the house and forcing them into arranged marriages. Slowly but surely, Lale and her siblings — who range from junior-school age to teenagers — will struggle against their uncle’s oppression. Working from a script she co-wrote with Alice Winocour (Disorder), Ergüven takes her time laying out the subtle psychological horrors weighing on these girls. Initially, Mustang has a winning breeziness, as the feisty Lale and her equally spirited sisters — particularly eldest sibling Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) — flaunt their blossoming sexuality, conspiring against their uncle and reactionary grandmother (Nihal Koldas). These young women make for delightful company, but soon Ergüven ups the ante as Erol imposes harsher restrictions, eventually leaving them locked up in their house. Mustang’s claustrophobic setting recalls the twisted Greek drama Dogtooth, in which manipulative parents trick their children into believing that leaving the family home would be dangerous. It never becomes as demented as that film, but the sickening subjugation of these women becomes increasingly infuriating. Adding to the irritation is Pekcan’s expertly deplorable performance as the girls’ uncle, his condescending attitude a pungent stand-in for a society that believes it knows best how young women should comport themselves.
6 Screen International at Dubai December 11, 2015
Cinema of the World Tur. 2015. 97mins Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven Production companies CG Cinéma, Bam Film, Vistamar Filmproduktion, Uhlandfilm, Canal Plus, Ciné Plus, ZDF/ARTE International sales Kinology, festivals@ kinology.eu Producer Charles Gillibert Screenplay Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour Cinematography David Chizallet, Ersin Gok Editor Mathilde Van de Moortel Production designer Serdar Yemisci Music Warren Ellis Main cast Günes Nezihe Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Elit Iscan, Tugba Sunguroglu, Ilayda Akdogan, Nihal Koldas, Ayberk Pekcan
Director Hany Abu-Assad has often focused on films that give voice to the experience of everyday Palestinians, so it is no surprise he would gravitate to the story of Mohammed Assaf, a Gazan singer who went on to win Arab Idol in 2013, becoming an underdog hero for his country. In its broad strokes, The Idol may seem like a familiar star-is-born tale, but at every turn Abu-Assad transcends that simplicity for a more moving, complex examination of what Assaf had to go through to even enter the competition — and what the idea of ‘winning’ means for someone faced with daily oppression. The movie begins in Assaf ’s childhood, where he is played by Qais Atallah with a winning openness. Assaf and his sister Nour (Hiba Atallah) want to form a band, performing at local weddings where he shows off his amazing voice. But after Nour is stricken with kidney failure, he must pursue his musical dreams by himself. Flashing ahead to 2012 when he is a young man, Assaf (now played by Tawfeek Barhom) drives a cab but has not abandoned his hopes of becoming a singer. He sees only one chance, which is to enter Arab Idol and take part in try-outs in Egypt. But because Assaf doesn’t have a visa, auditioning will prove a formidable challenge. Abu-Assad’s previous films (such as Paradise Now and Omar) have often been despairing dramas that speak bluntly about the difficulties facing Palestinians. By comparison, The Idol is deceptively heart-warming and sweet, the nostalgic look at Assaf’s early days offset by the suffering he sees in Gaza and the illness plaguing his sister. When the film jumps ahead to 2012, it follows Assaf ’s plan to be discovered as a singer, culminating in the Arab Idol competition. The movie becomes more formulaic, but it is remarkable how much emotion and commentary Abu-Assad brings to potentially clichéd material. In a sense, the film-maker is subverting the predictable feelgood conventions to show us true hardship as opposed to the artificial stakes presented in most Western reality-competition shows. And without being preachy, he uses the quiet determination on Barhom’s face to suggest a lifetime of anguish finally being expressed through melancholy, gorgeous songs.
Arabian Nights UK-Pal-Qat-Neth-UAE. 2015. 99mins Director Hany Abu-Assad Production companies Mezza Terra Media, Majdal Films, KeyFilm, September Film, Doha Film Institute, Fortress Film Clinic, Rawabi, Image Nation Abu Dhabi, Cactus World Films, Full Moon Productions, Enjaaz International sales Séville International, anickp@filmsseville.com Producers Ali Jaafar, Amira Diab Screenplay Hany AbuAssad, Sameh Zoabi Cinematography Ehab Assal Editor Eyas Salman Production design Nael Kanj Music Habib Shehadeh Hanna Main cast Qais Atallah, Hiba Atallah, Ahmed Qassim, Abd-Elkarim AbuBarakeh, Tawfeek Barhom, Dima Awawdeh, Ahmed Al Rokh, Saber Shreim, Nadine Labaki
www.screendaily.com
Director interviews, pages 8-9
El Clasico Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan
Bilal Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan The animated feature Bilal — the first of its kind from the UAE — tells the story of one of Mohammed’s closest companions, a former slave from Ethiopia. Addressing the need to live in honesty as a free man and the desire to worship one god, it deals with common religious themes amid the casual cruelty of 600ad. This is a muscular story about the fight for freedom that is rich and vibrant and authentic. However, Bilal’s beefy approach also extends to scenes of torture and bloodthirsty battle sequences that may curtail the film’s demographic appeal, and its 114-minute running time reflects a too-loose narrative. Visually, Bilal repatriates animated Arabian iconography after a spell locked up in the Disney bunker of Aladdin and 1001 Arabian Nights, before The Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones comprehensively raided the region’s costume department and settings. With some tweaks and trims to excesses, this could be seen widely in observant households and schools on the international stage, while it clearly boasts powerful local appeal. However with a theme song entitled ‘Warrior’, and playing out to the words: “I’m a warrior, oh, mama, I’m not afraid,” Bilal turns the story of a child’s pain into a violent adult film that could possibly be an awkward fit in the current, charged political atmosphere, even if the events are true to life. Bilal is based on the real-life historical figure Bilal Ibn Rabah, a companion of the prophet Mohammed who was the first Muadhin to call the faithful to prayer. Bilal experiences a few teething problems in the animation department — particularly with too-evident performance capture. Figures sometimes glide as opposed to walk. But these are generally overcome by the film’s impressive aesthetic, and this is, visually, an electrifying debut for Barajoun Entertainment. The story is about the orphan slave boy Bilal and his sister who are forced into servitude for the nasty Lord Umayya. Starting with the death of their mother, the film moves into Bilal’s adolescence and early adulthood as he is oppressed by Umayya, his nasty son, and the witch doctors in Mecca who run society with their grasping idolatry. His main concern is to keep his sister safe, but Bilal will eventually undergo a political and religious awakening.
www.screendaily.com
Cinema of the World UAE. 2015. 114mins Director Khurram H Alavi Production company Barajoun Entertainment International sales info@ barajoun.com Producer Ayman Jalal Screenplay Alex Kronemer, Michael Wolfe, Khurram H Alavi, Yassin Kamel Cinematography Ajdin Durakovic, Khurram H Alavi, Nareg Kalenderian Editor Patricia Heneine Music Atli Orvarsson Voice cast Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ian McShane, China Anne McClain, Jacob Latimore
Muhr Feature
A heartfelt, old-fashioned story about following your dreams, El Clasico adopts an unusual narrative stance, straddling Kurdistan and Spain, La Liga, dwarfism and the need for acceptance — which perhaps reflects the background of its director and co-writer, Halkawt Mustafa (Red Heart), who emigrated from Iraq to coproduction territory Norway. At its heart are brothers Alan and Shirwan (Wrya and Dana Ahmed), both dwarves, who embark on a strange adventure to Madrid to deliver a pair of Kurdish slippers to the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (who features only in a life-sized underwear poster). Hopes of a Bend It Like Beckham cultural-crossover hit are soon dashed on the rocks of implausibility, but El Clasico is nothing if not a sincere and well-meaning production. Open-hearted Alan is thwarted in love; he wants to marry neighbourhood beauty Gona (Rozhin Sharifi), but her father won’t let her embrace a little person. El Clasico feels more authentic here, at home in Kurdistan, where Alan runs a tea shop while Shirwan works at the cobblers run by Gona’s intolerant dad (Kamaran Raof). Kurdish locals fully embrace the Spanish football league, taking noisy sides in the showcase derby between Real Madrid and Barcelona FC — known as El Clasico. Barca fan Shirwan devotes his enthusiasm to Lionel Messi, while Gona’s father is an inveterate Ronaldo supporter. Alan decides he needs to make a big gesture to win over Gona’s father, who has spent months fashioning a pair of slippers for Ronaldo. He decides to cash in his savings and make an illegal trip to Madrid to present them personally, an arbitrary and uneasy voyage in which he is joined by the now homeless Shirwan. El Clasico is a rather fantastical production, the brothers driving around on a quad bike with football flags aloft. Alan’s idea that he will gain acceptance by making this trip seems a rather dim hope, meaning that his sacrifice of a kidney in pursuit of this goal makes him look not so much heroic as deeply misguided. Halkawt Mustafa directs by the screenplay, and there’s little here with enough visual impact to distract from a script that is possibly too much to swallow in one sitting.
Iraq-Nor-UAE. 2015. 97mins Director/producer Halkawt Mustafa Production companies Hene Films International sales Halkawt Mustafa, halkwatm@gmail.com Screenplay Anders Fagerholt, Halkawt Mustafa Cinematography Kjell Vassdal Editor Inger Lise Langfeldt Music Trond Bjerknes Main cast Wrya Ahmed, Dana Ahmed, Kamaran Raof, Rozhin Sharifi
December 11, 2015 Screen International at Dubai 7
Director Interviews
Hany Abu-Assad
Sean McAllister
The prize-winning director tells Colin Brown why he was unable to resist making The Idol, the story of the Palestinian winner of Arab Idol
The film-maker says he wanted to make a film about the ‘hidden gem’ of the Middle East but then events made Syria anything but. Colin Brown reports
W
The Idol
M
ohammed Assaf ’s journey from humble Gaza wedding singer to the international pop sensation who was crowned winner of the second season of Arab Idol in 2013 has made him a regional superstar. His final performance literally gave voice to the Palestinian plight. His incredible story forms the basis of Hany Abu-Assad’s crowdpleaser The Idol, which arrives in Dubai hot off a festival run that has already taken the director from Toronto to Doha and most recently Antalya, Turkey. This is a change of pace for Abu-Assad — in all senses. After his strenuous efforts to make Paradise Now and Omar, two powerful and intense thrillers that each received Oscar nominations for best foreign-language film, The Idol is an irrepressibly feelgood film that took just four months to get financed. International sales have also been stellar.
“My sister told me about Assaf when I was in Cannes to pick up the Un Certain Regard jury prize for Omar,” Abu-Assad recalls of the film’s origins. “I usually don’t follow that kind of television show, but Assaf ’s story and his voice just got me hooked. I was more happy to see him win than I was to win my Cannes award. “When I was approached a year later to direct a film about him, I got goosebumps. I realised that art — and Assaf ’s voice is an art — can be so powerful in the way it turns ugliness into beauty. Art knows no boundaries and no obstacles. We can all understand art no matter what our differences.” Abu-Assad rewrote from scratch the script that was first presented to him. As with his previous films, he was interested in seeing how far he could play with the associated storytelling conventions. “With this story I am trying to find the fine lines between drama and melodrama and between fairy-tale and realism,” says Abu-Assad, whose desire to root this rags-to-riches biographical fantasy in authenticity meant The Idol became the first feature to shoot on location in Gaza in decades. “I tried to make it so the audience has no idea what to expect one moment to the next. When there’s a scene of high drama, I turn it to laughter. When it’s light, I take the film back to the dramatic. The audience is on a rollercoaster throughout.”
8 Screen International at Dubai December 11, 2015
hen UK documentary maker Sean McAllister first found himself drawn to Syria — almost as respite from a career spent in life-threatening war zones — he had little idea the story that would unfold over the next five years would hurl him back onto the front line. Working alone with his camera, A Syrian Love Story documents a dissolving marriage between Palestinian freedom fighter Amer and his Syrian activist wife Raghda just as Syria blows up around them, forcing them to flee with their kids to Lebanon and eventually Paris. “I was trying to make a film in Dubai for the BBC,” recalls McAllister. “Going crazy there, I started taking secret trips to Damascus and fell in love with the place. It seemed like a hidden jewel in the Middle East, but no-one wanted a film from there. No-one knew where Syria was or cared. I was interested in
making a film about a functioning dictatorship at first. “When the Arab Spring started, political change seemed impossible in Syria so I took off and made a film in Yemen [The Reluctant Revolutionary]. I’d met and filmed bits with Amer before I left and after four months in Yemen I heard the unthinkable, that protests had started in Damascus and Amer and his son had been arrested on the first day holding pictures of Raghda. I flew back to the UK, gave my Yemen rushes to the editor and went straight to Damascus.” Even without a civil war, capturing a disintegrating family in such close quarters is challenging. “Film-making often takes, but I think it can give also,” McAllister muses. “So when things start going badly in their relationship in France, both would call on me to come over and try to sort it out or at least listen. But I would also film, hence such intimate scenes. Our responsibility is much greater and I make the judgments in the edit of what crosses the line.” Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, A Syrian Love Story has stirred critics and audiences alike. “The news tells stories but often fails to characterise, which is what docs do well,” say McAllister. “People come away speechless and tearful. I’ve never had so many hugs from strangers who feel compelled to hug and hold me.”
A Syrian Love Story
www.screendaily.com
Dubai Film Connection, pages 10-13
Anu Menon
Larry Yang
London-based director Anu Menon talks to Udita Jhunjhunwala about her second feature Waiting, which is receiving its world premiere in Dubai
Larry Yang talks to Liz Shackleton about how he adapted a rural Chinese story set in the 1980s for contemporary audiences in China and overseas
S
Waiting
A
fter studying at the London Film School, Anu Menon made her feature debut in India with Hindi-language romantic comedy London Paris New York in 2012. She was also one of the film-makers involved in Mumbai-based Drishyam Films’ collaborative feature X: Past Is Present, which brought together 11 directors to each shoot a section of the same story. It was during the making of the latter film that Menon met Drishyam Films founder Manish Mundra, who came on board to produce Menon’s latest film Waiting and also brought in local coproducer Ishka Films. While London Paris New York was commercial Bollywood, Menon has taken a different route with Waiting, which stars theatre and film veteran Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin, who is know for her work in Indian indie films such as Margarita, With A Straw
www.screendaily.com
and That Girl In Yellow Boots. Shah and Koechlin play characters who meet in a hospital while their respective partners are undergoing medical care. “Waiting is based on personal experience, and writing the film was a way of dealing with that experience, but it’s not a literal account,” says Menon. “The strength of the film is that it deals with a tough situation and asks some profound questions but with a light touch, which in a way makes it more heartbreaking.” Shah, who is constantly in demand in India and has also appeared in international projects such as The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, is being honoured with a lifetime achievement award at DIFF. Menon says she learned a great deal about her craft from working with him. “He has a specific interpretation of the script, which ensured that I did my homework before arriving on the set,” she says. “He delivers a hugely detailed performance and Kalki was matching him with the same energy.” Menon is now writing several scripts and lining up a project that will be produced by Mumbai-based Pritish Nandy Communications. “It’s about the stories you want to tell — sometimes they’re small and niche and sometimes they’re more mainstream. I think I have both kinds of stories in me,” Menon says. US-based Shoreline Entertainment is handling international sales on Waiting, which screens in Cinema of the World.
et in a remote village in China’s Shanxi province, Larry Yang’s Mountain Cry tells the story of a young, mute widow and her slowly evolving relationship with a man who is tasked with looking after her and her two children after her abusive husband dies. Yang’s script, based on a short novel by Ge Shuiping, was picked up by Village Roadshow Pictures Asia (VRPA) when it was selected for the project pitches at Beijing International Film Festival in 2014. VRPA’s Ellen Eliasoph produced the film with Victoria Hon of Beijing-based Hairun Pictures. “It’s about a mute girl who is independent in her thinking but completely trapped, not just in language, but in this remote mountain village where she is treated as a foreigner,” says Yang, who lived in New York as a teenager and studied film-making at Beijing Film
Academy and Edinburgh University. “The story touched me and echoed my own situation as I was also feeling like an outsider when I moved back to China in 2004 and was struggling to find my own voice.” Lang Yueting and Wang Ziyi, who both previously appeared in Johnnie To’s Office and Blind Detective, head the cast of the film. Yang says he wanted to work with Lang because her background in theatre and music enables her to express a wide range of emotions without using dialogue: “She has a rhythm and inner elegance that was perfect for this role.” Although the story is set in the 1980s, Yang says he was keen to make it relevant for young Chinese audiences. He also wanted to deliver a different take on the ‘nongcun pian’ or village film genre that has a long tradition in China. “Young people nowadays carry a heavy burden — their voices are not heard and they are forced to satisfy a lot of expectations,” says Yang. “I think when they watch this movie, they will relate to the main characters’ struggles as young people facing up to unreasonable prejudice and beginning to understand responsibility and love.” Mountain Cry received its world premiere as the closing film of this year’s Busan International Film Festival, after which Fortissimo Films sold it to Hark & Company for Japanese distribution.
Mountain Cry
December 11, 2015 Screen International at Dubai 9
FEATURE DUBAI FILM CONNECTION
DFC participants at most recent edition in 2013
Up close and personal Dubai Film Connection is dominated by intimate, character-driven tales from voices that are often ignored or marginalised, DFC artistic director Jane Williams tells Melanie Goodfellow
T
he festival’s renowned international co-financing market Dubai Film Connection (DFC) — aimed at finding finance for independent Arab cinema — re-opens its doors on Friday (December 11) after a one-year hiatus. A total of 12 film projects from Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco and Jordan will be presented at this year’s edition. DIFF, which dropped DFC in 2014 to focus its market activities on distribution rather than development, has re-introduced the event because of the demand from film-makers. “All the feedback we got from producers and directors made it clear we had to bring it back,” says DIFF managing director Shivani Pandya. The last time DFC took place, in December 2013, the initial euphoria over the pro-democracy Arab Spring was subsiding and the Middle East and North Africa were about to enter one of the bloodiest periods in recent history. In the interim period, some 15 million people have been displaced by the violence wracking the region, which has left hundreds of thousands dead. The event’s artistic director Jane Williams notes, however, that few of the 12 projects selected for this year’s edition deal directly with the violence affecting the region, although its consequences resonate in many of the works. “One of the things we found which was really
distinctive about the selection is that within the context of these epic wars and what has been such a difficult time in the Arab region, the films are very personal,” says Williams. “They’re very intimate and some are really quite groundbreaking in their exploration of intimacy, with female sexuality being a strong subject.” Williams points to The Maiden’s Pond by Lebanese director Bassem Breish and My Favorite Fabric by Syria’s Gayaneh Jiji. Inspired by the discovery that his late grandfather had a mistress, Breish’s film is about a 65-year-old woman in a small Lebanese village who is having an affair with the owner of the local shop. Her life is further complicated when her pregnant daughter turns up after a recent divorce. My Favorite Fabric, set in Damascus on the eve of the pro-democracy uprising in 2011, follows a young woman who goes on a voyage of sexual discovery by taking a room at a local brothel. “These projects will surprise people,” says Williams. “The Maiden’s Pond is one of the most beautiful scripts I’ve read for its representation of women and older women in particular. It’s a really interesting work.” Women’s voices There are a number of projects that highlight the vulnerability of women and the poor in modern Arab societies, notes Williams. These include Hala
10 Screen International at Dubai December 11, 2015
‘These projects will surprise people’ Jane Williams, DFC
Lotfy’s The Bridge from Egypt, which is about a woman who loses her son after he falls through a hole in a badly maintained bridge in Cairo, and compatriot Mohamed Siam’s Amal, a documentary following a teenage girl struggling to find her place, sexuality and identity in the macho, male-dominated landscape of post-revolutionary Egypt. “There’s a lot of anger about the vulnerability of women in Arab societies,” says Williams. Amal is one of three documentaries in this year’s selection alongside Londonbased Moroccan director Hind Bensari’s Weight Throwers, which is about Morocco’s forgotten Paralympic heroes, and Ibrahim, which follows Jordanian filmmaker Lina Alabed’s search for her father, a secret member of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal Organisation who set off on a mission in 1987 and has not been seen since. Ibrahim is one of a number of projects that explore the idea of loss. “We received [submissions for] so many projects
about characters looking for people who are missing, who have disappeared through war or kidnapping,” Williams reveals. “It’s becoming a classical form of Arab storytelling and a consequence of everything that has gone on over the last 50 years.” “In Ibrahim, the film-maker is trying to discover what happened to her father. It’s not a search for the historical facts, but an attempt to understand her father and, in a certain sense, also herself. She reveals some difficult stuff about her dad in the film.” Projects exploring similar emotional terrain include Narjiss Nejjar’s A Step Behind The Sun, which is about an Algerian-Moroccan woman who lost her parents in 1975 when Algeria expelled thousands of long-time residents of Moroccan origin, and Iraqi director Koutaiba Al Janabi’s Daoud’s Winter, a film inspired by the loss of his family during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The other projects include Papion On Top Of The Water Tank by Jordan’s Yahya Alabdallah, Pagan Magic by Moroccan film-maker Fyzal Boulifa, The Inheritor from Lebanese director Halim Sabbagh and Wajib, the new project from Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir. “We received 130 submissions and we always get about 20 projects which tick all the boxes,” says Williams. “Then it becomes really hard to whittle them down. We were supposed to select just 10 projects
www.screendaily.com
this year but we’ve managed to squeeze in another two.” For the first time this year, all projects had to have at least 20% of finance in place. “Responding to feedback from past editions, we’ve tried to ensure the projects we’ve selected are at a more advanced stage than in the past,” explains Williams.
DUBAI FILM CONNECTION 2015 PARTICIPANTS
Koutaiba Al Janabi Daoud’s Winter (Iraq)
Hind Bensari
Weight Throwers (Morocco)
Annemarie Jacir Wajib (Palestine)
Narjiss Nejjar
A Step Behind (Morocco)
Yahya Alabdallah
Papion On Top Of The Water Tank (Jordan)
Fyzal Boulifa
Pagan Magic (Morocco)
Gayaneh Jiji
Lina Alabed
Ibrahim (Jordan)
Bassem Breish
The Maiden’s Pond (Lebanon)
Hala Lotfy
My Favorite Fabric (Syria)
The Bridge (Egypt)
Halim Sabbagh
Mohamed Siam
The Inheritor (Lebanon)
Amal (Egypt)
DFC partner projects In addition to the 12 projects selected by Williams and her team, all three nominees for the $100,000 IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award aimed at supporting Gulf cinema will also participate in DFC. These comprise Sahaab, directed by Qatar’s Khalifa Al Muraikhi; Saudi director Shahad Ameen’s fantasy Scales, and Emirati director Layla Kaylif ’s The Letter Writer, about a professional scribe who falls for the woman one of his clients is trying to woo. The DFC line-up also includes two projects from Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung — Ghassan Halwani’s Clean Up The Living Room, We’ve Got Visitors Coming and Amjad Al Rasheed and Darin Sallam’s The Parrot — along with Meyar Al Roumi’s The Return from Beirut Cinema Platform. For the first time, all the main DFC prizes (excluding the IWC/DIFF) are being fronted by local film and TV players. There are six cash prizes: they are the Cinescape/Front Row Filmed Entertainment distribution alliance ($10,000), pan-Arab distributor Empire ($10,000), Dubai-based Fortress Film Clinic ($15,000), Sanad Film Fund Abu Dhabi ($10,000), Arab Radio and Television Network ($10,000) and DIFF. “It’s an important development because it means distributors and broadcasters from the Arab world are getting behind s the local cinema,” says Williams. ■ DFC PROFILES, PAGE 12
AGENTS OF CHANGE GULF FUNDS WORK TOGETHER TO BUILD AN INDUSTRY Dubai Film Connection and Abu Dhabi’s SANAD film fund are increasingly working together to nurture and grow the local film business. SANAD provides the $10,000 SANAD prize, and has also supported two of this year’s DFC projects: Hala Lotfy’s The Bridge and Annemarie Jacir’s Wajib. “It’s good to be competitive. It keeps us on our toes and makes us work harder,” says Intishal Al Timimi, SANAD’s director of Arab programming, of the friendly rivalry between the regional funds and events
www.screendaily.com
vying for the same limited number of good projects. “At the same time we feel increasingly that it makes sense for all the funds in the region to work together.” The combined support of SANAD, DIFF’s post-production and production fund Enjaaz and the grant schemes of the Doha Film Institute in Qatar have been instrumental in fostering the Arab world’s independent film-making scene in recent years. While the amounts of money involved may seem relatively small by European or US standards — SANAD’s maximum award
development grant is $20,000 and post-production grant $60,000 — they can make the difference between a film being completed or not — especially when the grants are combined. “The funds have been the agents of tremendous change,” says Al Timimi. “So many films would not have seen the light of day without their support. For some films, $60,000 is a lot of money, which it would take the filmmaker two or three years to raise.” The importance of the funds cannot be overstated in a region of mass political instability, where
film-makers in territories with previously well-established film industries are turning to the Gulf funds for crucial support. “We can all do different things towards the work progressing and the filmmakers progressing,” says DFC’s Jane Williams. “We just need to think strategically and make sure the main aim is to support the film-makers.” Melanie Goodfellow
SANAD’S Intishal Al Timimi
December 11, 2015 Screen International at Dubai 11
dubai film connection
Amal
Ibrahim
The Inheritor
Dir Mohamed Siam
Dir Lina Alabed
Dir Halim Sabbagh
Project’s country of origin Egypt
Project’s country of origin Lebanon
Project’s country of origin Lebanon
Filmed over four years, Mohamed Siam’s documentary details the life of Amal, a young Egyptian woman in post-revolution Cairo. It examines and observes what it takes to grow up as a young woman in a troubled and male-dominated country. For Siam, Amal embodies the notion of a “child of the revolution”. He first met her while attending opposition group meetings and says she stood out for being uncontrollable, petulant, intense, angry and passionate but also sensitive, needy and willing to speak intimately. Siam was fascinated by the tension between Amal and her mother. “I had to try and understand the gap between the generations in every single way,” Siam says. A director, producer and cinematographer, Siam is a Berlinale and Durban Talent Campus alumnus, a winner of the Robert Bosch Stiftung film prize and the AfriDocs prize in Durban, South Africa in 2014. After studying psychology and film-making, Siam’s short-film output as an independent documentary and fiction film-maker includes For Women Only, a documentary depicting a veiled girl’s daily life. Siam has won grants from institutions including the Sundance Documentary Fund, ITVS, the Jan Vrijman Fund (IDFA Bertha), HotDocs and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. Sara Boekemeyer of Berlin’s Detail Film is the project’s German-based coproducer. The film-makers’ DFC wishlist includes broadcast deals, appointing an international sales agent and securing North American and Scandinavian partners in order to complete the documentary. Stuart Kemp
One day in 1987 the then five-year-old Lina Alabed said goodbye to her father and he disappeared. His exit and how it has shaped her life serves as the basis for Alabed’s feature-length documentary Ibrahim. Her Palestinian father was a member of the notorious secret intelligence affairs group, the Palestinian Militant Organization Revolutionary Council (Abu Nidal), and Alabed was used to her father leaving for days at a time. Her documentary reflects a childhood spent in a largely silent house, with her Egyptian mother forced to continue life while raising five children in Damascus, Syria. “The biggest hurdle was to re-open the story of my disappeared father with my mother and sisters and brothers; to break that silence,” Alabed says. The documentary also exposes the challenges met by a woman who asks questions of hostile and secretive institutions. A Damascus University journalism graduate, Alabed wasn’t deterred from pursuing her story. “When you take the decision to make a personal film and to face your history, it’s hard,” she says. “Then you begin the process and it becomes a journey to know ourselves better.” Alabed, who is now based in Palestine, made her graduation documentary film about the Syrian author Mohamed Al Maghout. It aired on Al Jazeera in 2007. Her second documentary Noor Alhuda (2010) garnered the Dox Box best Syrian documentary film jury prize in 2010. She produced and directed her featurelength documentary Damascus, My First Kiss in 2012, which made its international premiere at Dok Leipzig and was broadcast on the Arte channel. Beirut-based Sakado is producing Ibrahim. Rami Nihawi of Beirutbased Sakado produces. Stuart Kemp
Film-maker Halim Sabbagh aims to use the instability of Lebanon and the region’s war-torn turmoil as the driving force of his latest project. The Inheritor, written with Antoine Waked in Lebanese Arabic, English and French, details the story of a young man whose father dies suddenly, leaving behind a debt-ridden, unfinished house in the Bekaa Valley. The man faces the choice of honouring his inheritance while staying in the country or leaving to follow his girlfriend to Dubai for work. “Events change rapidly and so does the culture of an entire region,” Sabbagh says. “Fortunately, the story of The Inheritor manages to do that just fine as it depicts my generation and its recurrent dilemma of whether to leave or stay in the country; accept our parents’ inheritance or reject it entirely.” The film-maker intends to confront the main character with his inherited past, his present situation and his projected future. The script was developed within the framework of Meditalents’ writing workshop and won the Francophonie award at the Beirut co-production platform. A Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts film-making graduate, Sabbagh’s resumé boasts several short films and the documentary The Joy Of Life (2011). He has worked in advertising and made TV commercials and corporate videos. “The film industry suffered greatly during and after the Lebanese civil war,” he explains. “During the last decade, it is in the advertising industry where most film-makers found shelter.” Sabbagh is partnered with producer Myriam Sassine at Lebanese company Abbout Productions to source co-production partners for The Inheritor. Stuart Kemp
Producers Mohamed Siam, Sara Boekemeyer Production companies Artkhana (Egypt) Budget $200,000 Finance raised to date $126,000: Robert
Ibrahim
The Inheritor
Bosch Stiftung (Ger), Screen Institute Beirut (Leb), Hot Docs Blue Ice (Can) Contact Mohamed Siam m_siam2000@yahoo.com; Sara Boekemeyer boekemeyer@detailfilm.de
Producer Rami Nihawi Production company Sakado (Leb) Budget $193,000 Finance raised to date $77,000 Contact Rami Nihawi rami.nihawi@gmail.com
Producer Myriam Sassine Production company Abbout Productions (Leb) Budget $585,000 Finance raised to date $168,000 Contact Myriam Sassine
Amal
12 Screen International at Dubai December 11, 2015
myriam@abboutproductions.com
www.screendaily.com
Screenings, page 14
Daoud’s Winter
Dir Bassem Breish
Papion On Top Of The Water Tank
Project’s country of origin Lebanon
Dir Yahya Alabdallah
Project’s country of origin Netherlands
The Maiden’s Pond
Dir Koutaiba Al Janabi
Project’s country of origin Jordan On his deathbed, Bassem Breish’s grandfather revealed he had been having an affair for 20 years — with one of his wife’s best friends. This revelation provides the starting point for Breish’s debut fiction feature project The Maiden’s Pond. The script details the story of Salma, a 65-year-old woman who lives alone in a mountain village in Mount Lebanon and has been having a secret relationship with the village’s married shopkeeper. Her estranged, pregnant and recently divorced daughter turns up and the pair struggle to build a connection. When Salma’s lover has a stroke, his family finds out about the affair. Breish says starting from a real-life moment made it “relatively easy” to write his script, penned in Arabic and French. His early career as a stage actor in Lebanon and a move to the UK with roles in Johnny Furse’s Blind Flight and Antonia Bird’s award-winning 9/11 film Hamburg Cell “made me more aware of actors on set and developed in me the knowledge of developing characters”, Breish says. He won an international Emmy for Lebanese web-drama Shankaboot in 2011 and in 2007 his debut short Both was selected for Critics’ Week at Cannes. In 2013, Breish won the Robert Bosch Stiftung film prize at the Berlinale for his short film Free Range. For his feature debut, the Lebanese film-maker has attracted initial backing from Cologne-based producer Roman Roitman, who co-founded production and finance outfit Monokel, with backing from the Mediengründerzentrum NRW. Breish and Roitman are hoping to find co-producers from the Arab world and Europe here at DFC. Stuart Kemp
Jordanian film-maker Yahya Alabdallah isn’t hanging about waiting for his second feature to be fully financed before he starts shooting. His plan is to dive straight in. Papion On Top Of The Water Tank is bolstered by the fact it is “almost silent”, Alabdallah says. The decorated film-maker has already cast Saleh Bakri and Yumna Marwan in key roles. The story hinges on the accidental death of a man in a water tank and the quest by his brother (Bakri) to recover the body from the vessel’s corrupt owner. It is inspired by Ghassan Kanafani’s novel Men Under The Sun about a trio of Palestinian refugees who die in a smuggler’s water tank while trying to illegally enter Kuwait for work. Alabdallah says he is going to shoot “directly from his treatment”, not willing to wait for production fund backing, which can mean years of frustration, fruitless script development and inadequate sums offered. “It takes years if you want to produce a fiction feature film in the Arabic world, so I wrote it to be able to shoot without all the market circus,” he says. Born in Libya in 1978, Alabdallah grew up in Saudi Arabia and graduated from ECAIR Paris with a master’s degree in cinema. He has written and directed short films and fiction and documentary features, touring the festival circuit and picking up various plaudits. His 2011 debut feature The Last Friday (Al Juma Al Akheira) screened at the Berlinale in 2012 having won international awards including the Muhr Arab special film prize at the previous year’s edition of DIFF. Rula Nasser is producing. Stuart Kemp
The Maiden’s Pond
Papion On Top Of The Water Tank
Producers Roman Roitman, Bassem Breish Production company Monokel (Ger) Budget $790,000 Finance raised to date $200,000
Producers Rula Nasser Production company The Imaginarium Films (Jordan) Budget $280,000 Finance raised to date $60,000 Contact Rula
Mediengründerzentrum NRW (Ger), Monokel (Ger) Contact Roman Roitman roman@monokel.de
Nasser rula@theimaginariumfilms.com, rula.nasser@ gmail.com
www.screendaily.com
To be set during the winter of 1988 in Iraq, Baghdadborn film-maker Koutaiba Al Janabi wants to make a film about war without portraying either front lines or fighting soldiers. Instead, Daoud’s Winter is written from the perspective of an educated young man drafted to fight in the Iran-Iraq war, and details the story of student Daoud who is signed up after his parents fall victim to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Because he is literate, Daoud is deployed to catalogue the war-dead arrivals at a warehouse before organising their transport to an anonymous mass grave in the desert. One day he finds a man of similar age barely alive and decides to flee the army base and return the dying man to his family for a proper burial. “Our country has never had time to heal,” says Al Janabi. “I want to portray the importance of people’s resilience during times of strife.” The film-maker, who studied photography and cinematography in Budapest, Hungary, and now divides his time between London and Baghdad, has worked previously as a cinematographer. He has also directed award-winning short films and documentaries including The Train, Wasteland and The Ever Restless Man. His feature debut Leaving Baghdad won the top prize at the Gulf Film Festival and was nominated for the Cinema for Peace Award at the Berlinale in 2011. Al Janabi has teamed with Netherlands-based Oak Motion Pictures, headed by producers Charlotte Scott-Wilson and Trent (who goes by just one name) to make Daoud’s Winter. Stuart Kemp
Daoud’s Winter Producer Trent Production company Oak Motion Pictures (Neth) Backers Hubert Bals Fund (Neth), Dutch Film Fund (Neth), Creative Europe, SANAD (UAE), September Film (Neth), Alcatraz Films (Fr) Budget $1.5m Finance raised to date $325,000 Contact Trent trent@oakmotionpictures.com
December 11, 2015 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
deranged vigilante who is taking border laws into his own hands.
09:00 THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY
Cinema of the World Madinat Theatre PUBLIC
(UK) Mister Smith Entertainment. 114mins. Biography, drama. Dir: Matt Brown. Cast: Jeremy Irons, Dev Patel, Devika Bhise. The true story of a unique genius whose pivotal theories propelled him from obscurity and derision into the world’s mathematical establishment.
SAMIR IN THE DUST
(Algeria, France, Qatar) L’image d’apres. 59mins. Non-fiction. Dir: Mohamed Ouzine. The cemetery of Sidi Amar is where the marabout has been laid to rest. He has become the confidante of the population of a whole territory as families come to ask him to intercede in their favour.
Cinema of the World MOE 13 PRESS
Muhr Feature MOE 13 PUBLIC
11:00 RAINBOW
(India) 106mins. Drama. Dir: Nagesh Kukunoor. Cast: Gulfam Khan, Krrish Chhabria, Hetal Gada. Ten-year-old Pari and her blind younger brother Chotu are orphans who live with their uncle. Pari has promised her brother he will be able to see again when he is nine years old; however, they have no money for an operation. With Chotu’s birthday approaching, Pari has to find a way to live up to her promise. When she discovers an A-list actor is filming on location in the desert, she sets off with Chotu on a fairytale-like odyssey. Cinema for Children Madinat Theatre PUBLIC
11:30 WAITING
(India) Shoreline Entertainment. 92mins. Drama. Dir: Anu Menon. Cast: Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Arjun Mathur. A retired professor, whose wife has been in a coma for months, meets a terrified young wife whose husband is in the same condiction after a sudden accident. Will grief drive them both insane, or can two lonely strangers support each other? Cinema of the World MOE 13 PRESS
14:00 THE PEANUTS MOVIE See box, above
THE TREASURE
Festival 14:00 THE PEANUTS MOVIE
(US) Twentieth Century Fox International. 93mins. Adventure, animation, comedy, family. Dir: Steve Martino. Cast: Francesca Capaldi, Noah Schnapp. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the rest of the beloved Peanuts gang make their big14:30 A DECENT MAN
(France) BAC Films Distribution. 111mins. Drama. Dir: Emmanuel Finkiel. Cast: Nicolas Duvauchelle, Melanie Thierry, Driss Ramdi. Eddie is depressed now he no longer lives with his son. As he walks home inebriated one night, he is mugged and badly hurt. Suddenly, Eddie becomes a hero to his son and a victim to his wife. When scapegoat Ahmed is charged, it marks the start of a dangerous freefall. Cinema of the World MOE 04 PUBLIC
14:45 AN
(France, Germany, Japan) MK2. 113mins. Drama. Dir: Naomi Kawase. Cast: Kirin Kiki, Masatoshi Nagase, Kyara Uchida.
14 Screen International at Dubai December 11, 2015
screen debut, like they’ve never been seen before. Charlie Brown, the world’s most beloved underdog, embarks on an epic and heroic quest, while his best pal, the loveable beagle Snoopy, takes to the skies in pursuit of his archnemesis, the Red Baron. Cinema for Children Madinat Arena GALA
Sentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayakis — pastries filled with sweet red-bean paste (known as ‘an’). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen, he accepts reluctantly. But Tokue proves to have magic in her hands and the business flourishes. Cinema of the World MOE 17 PUBLIC
RAMS
(Iceland) New Europe Film Sales. 92mins. Drama. Dir: Grimur Hakonarson. Cast: Sigurour Sigurjonsson, Theodor Juliusson, Charlotte Boving. In a secluded valley in Iceland, Gummi and Kiddi live side by side, tending to their sheep. Gummi and Kiddi have not spoken to each other in four decades. A crisis forces them
together when they least expect it. Cinema of the World MOE 06 PUBLIC
15:00 LOVE, THEFT AND OTHER ENTANGLEMENTS
(Palestine) 93mins. Drama. Dir: Muayad Alayan. Cast: Sami Metwasi, Maya Abu Alhayyat, Riyad Sliman. Mousa gets into trouble when he steals the wrong vehicle. What he thought was an Israeli car and an easy way to make money in his impoverished Palestinian refugee camp, turns out to be a load of misfortune, when he finds a kidnapped Israeli soldier in the trunk. Arabian Nights MOE 14 PUBLIC
MUSTANG
(France, Germany, Turkey) Kinology. 97mins. Drama. Dir: Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Cast: Elit Iscan, Gunes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Ilayda Akdogan. It’s the beginning of the summer. In a village in the north of Turkey, Lale and her four sisters come home from school and are innocently playing with boys. The supposed debauchery of their games causes a scandal with
unintended consequences. Cinema of the World MOE 03 PUBLIC
15:15 LAND OF MINE
(Denmark, Germany) K5 Media Group Gmbh. 100mins. Drama, war, historical. Dir: Martin Zandvliet. Cast: Roland Moller, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman. The Second World War is over. A group of German POWs are brought to Denmark and forced to disarm 2 million land mines. Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen lets his rage rain down on the prisoners, until one day a tragic incident makes him change his view. Cinema of the World MOE 01 PUBLIC
15:30 DESIERTO
(France, Mexico) IM Global. 94mins. Thriller. Dir: Jonas Cuaron. Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Catano, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Moises travels with a group of immigrants through an unguarded, hellish section of the Sonoran desert, trying to cross from Mexico into the US, when suddenly a shot rings out — they fall into the sights of Sam, a
(Romania, France) Wild Bunch. 89mins. Drama. Dir: Corneliu Porumboiu. Cast: Cuzin Toma, Adrian Purcarescu, Corneliu Cozmei. At night Costi likes to read stories to his six-year-old son. Their favourite is Robin Hood. Costi sees himself as the hero — the defender of the oppressed. One evening, his neighbour pays him a visit and shares a secret: there’s treasure buried in his grandparents’ garden. Cinema of the World MOE 05 PUBLIC
17:30 SAMSUNG SHORT FILM CONTEST
120mins. The Beach PUBLIC
17:45 ABDULLAH
(UAE) 97mins. Drama. Dir: Humaid Al Suwaidi. Cast: Fatima Altaei, Alaa Shaker, Mansour Al Feeli, Mohammed Ahmed, Humaid Alawadi, Brent Jenkins, David Daly. Abdullah struggles to hide his love for music. Muhr Emirati MOE 03 PUBLIC
CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR
(Thailand, UK, France, Germany, Malaysia) The Match Factory. 122mins. Drama. Dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Cast: Jarinpattra Rueangram, Banlop Lomnoi. www.screendaily.com
Further DIFF coverage, see screendaily.com
Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic. Jenjira watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. There may be a connection between the soldiers’ syndrome and the ancient site beneath the clinic. Cinema of the World MOE 06 PUBLIC
18:00 CONCUSSION
(Australia, US, UK) Sony Pictures Releasing. 123mins. Drama, sport. Dir: Peter Landesman. Cast: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Luke Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The true story of Dr Bennet Omalu, the forensic neuropathologist, who investigated brain trauma in American football players. Cinema of the World Madinat Arena GALA
DHEEPAN
(France) Wild Bunch. 114mins. Drama. Dir: Jacques Audiard. Cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan. To escape the civil war in Sri Lanka, a Tamil freedom fighter flees with two strangers — a woman and a girl — hoping his new ‘family’ will make it easier for him to claim asylum in Europe. Cinema of the World MOE 17 PUBLIC
SHERPA
(Australia) 96mins. Adventure, non-fiction. Dir: Jennifer Peedom. Cast: Phurba Tashi Sherpa, Russell Brice, Ed Douglas. In 2013, news channels around the world reported an ugly brawl at 21,000 feet as European climbers fled a mob of angry Sherpas. Determined to explore the goings-on, the film-makers set out to make a film from the Sherpas’ point of view. Little did they know they would capture the worst tragedy in the history of Everest. Cinema of the World MOE 05 PUBLIC
www.screendaily.com
18:15 EL CLASICO
(Iraq, Norway, UAE) 97mins. Drama, Romance. Dir: Halkawt Mustafa. Cast: Wrya Ahmed, Dana Ahmed, Kamaran Raof, Rozhin Sharifi. Alan and Shirwan are on a dangerous quest through Iraq to meet Cristiano Ronaldo in Spain. Alan wants to marry Gona, but faces opposition from her father Jalal. He is a Real Madrid fan and has made a pair of slippers he dreams of giving to Ronaldo. Alan believes that if he takes the shoes to the footballer, he will win over Jalal. Muhr Feature MOE 04 PUBLIC
THE FOREIGN SON
(France, Qatar) 79mins. Non-fiction. Dir: Abdallah Badis. Cast: Abdallah Badis, Lisa Ghodbane, Amina Oussahla, Mohamed Amine Terchi, Amar Ziadi, Nassim Zerrouk. Answering the call of his homeland, a 50-year-old man returns to Algeria. Muhr Feature MOE 13 PUBLIC
18:30 YALLAH! UNDERGROUND
(Germany, Czech Republic, Egypt, UK, Canada, US) Stray Dogs. 85mins. Non-fiction, Music. Dir: Farid Eslam. Cast: Mohamed Safi, Zeid Hamdan, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Shadi Zaqtan, Maii Waleed, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Ousso Lotfy, Karim Adel Eissa, Marc Codsi, Mayaline Hage. Follows some of the most influential and progressive artists in Arab underground culture from 2009-13. Arabian Nights MOE 14 PUBLIC
YOUTH
(France, Italy, Switzerland, UK) Pathe International. 118mins. Comedy, Drama. Dir: Paolo Sorrentino. Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Jane Fonda. Fred and Mick, two old
friends approaching their eighties, are enjoying a vacation in a lovely hotel in the foothills of the Alps. Both know their days are numbered and decide to face the future together. Cinema of the World MOE 01 PUBLIC
18:45
funeral, Samir makes eye contact with a man who turns out to be his father. He takes Samir on a family familiarisation exercise to the heart of the Kabyle Parisian community. Arabian Nights MOE 06 PUBLIC
LET THEM COME
BROOKLYN
(Algeria, France) KG Productions. 95mins. Drama. Dir: Salem Brahimi. Cast: Rachida Brakni, Amazigh Kateb. A Mediterranean chronicle of a family that has been let down by history.
(Canada, Ireland, UK) HanWay Films. 111mins. Drama, Romance. Dir: John Crowley. Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen. 1950s Ireland. When a kindly priest sponsors her to go to the US, Eilis says a tearful goodbye to her family, and hello to… Brooklyn, with its bright lights, brownstones and brash confidence.
Muhr Feature Madinat Theatre PUBLIC
19:30 THE IDOL
(Palestine, Netherlands, Qatar, UK, UAE) Seville International. 98mins. Drama, music. Dir: Hany Abu-Assad. Cast: Tawfeek Barhom, Ashraf Barhoum, Ali Suliman. Gaza is home to Mohammed Assaf, and his sister Nour. On TV one evening he discovers an impossible dream: the auditions for Arab Idol, the most popular show in the Arab world, are taking place in Cairo. Despite the closed borders, he makes it in front of the judges in Egypt. Arabian Nights The Beach PUBLIC
21:00 A TALE OF WATER, PALM TREES AND FAMILY
(UAE) 162mins. Nonfiction. Dir: Nasser Aldhaheri. Cast: Gayah Aldhaheri, Aqidah Almouhairi, Sultan Alkowaiti. A deep-rooted journey through the UAE’s land, people and culture. Muhr Emirati MOE 03 PUBLIC
21:15 THE APACHES
(France) Films Distribution. 97mins. Drama. Dir: Nassim Amaouche. Cast: Nassim Amaouche, Laetitia Casta, Andre Dussolier. During his mother’s
Cinema of the World MOE 05 PUBLIC
21:30 FRANCOFONIA
(France, Germany, Netherlands) Films Boutique. 87mins. Drama, creative documentary. Dir: Alexander Sokurov. Cast: Louis-Do De Lencquesaing, Benjamin Utzerath, Vincent Nemeth. The story of Louvre director Jacques Jaujard and Nazi occupation officer Count Franziskus Wolff-Metternich, whose alliance would be the driving force behind the preservation of museum treasures.
Boutique. 121mins. Romance, Social. Dir: Danielle Arbid. Cast: Manal Issa, Vincent Lacoste, Paul Hamy. Lina, 19, arrives in Paris during the 1990s. She is alone and lost. With nothing but fear and her natural instinct for selfpreservation, she is looking for freedom. Muhr Feature MOE 01 PUBLIC
21:45 A SYRIAN LOVE STORY
(UK) 10ft Films. 76mins. Non-fiction, Drama, Social, War. Dir: Sean McAllister. Cast: Amer Daoud, Raghda Hasan. The poignant story of a family torn apart by war. Arabian Nights MOE 14 PUBLIC
ITHACA
(US) The Exchange. 89mins. Drama. Dir: Meg Ryan. Cast: Sam Shepard, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan. Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. Cinema of the World MOE 17 PUBLIC
22:00 RECOLLECTION
Cinema of the World MOE 04 PUBLIC
(Palestine) 70mins. Non-fiction. Dir: Kamal Aljafari. The person filming is returning to Jaffa, as he might to any catastrophic place.
MOUNTAIN CRY
Muhr Feature MOE 13 PUBLIC
(China) Fortissimo Films. 107mins. Action, Drama, Romance. Dir: Larry Yang. Cast: Yueting Lang, Ziyi Wang, Taishen Cheng, Ailei Yu, Jin Guo, Caigen Xu, Chendong Zhao, Siying Li. A tale that begins with the sudden, violent death of a man, leaving behind a mysterious widow — a young, mute woman with two children. Cinema of the World Madinat Arena GALA
PARISIENNE
(France, Lebanon) Films
22:15
DIFF editorial office Press and publicity office, Madinat Jumeirah Conference Centre
DIFF dailies editor and Asia editor Liz Shackleton lizshackleton@gmail.com Reporter Melanie Goodfellow, melanie.goodfellow@ btinternet.com Reviews editor Fionnuala Halligan, finn.halligan@screendaily Contributor Colin Brown, colinbrown1@earthlink.net Features editor Louise Tutt, tuttlouise@gmail.com Production editor Mark Mowbray, mark. mowbray@screendaily.com Sub editors Paul Lindsell, Adam Richmond, Richard Young Commercial director Nadia Romdhani, nadia. romdhani@screendaily.com, +44 7540 100 315 Sales manager Scott Benfold, scott.benfold@screendaily. com, +44 7765 257 260 US sales and business development executive Nikki Tilmouth, nikki. screeninternational@gmail. com, +1 323 868 7633 Production manager Jonathon Cooke, jonathon. cooke@mb-insight.com Group commercial director, MBI Alison Pitchford, alison. pitchford@mb-insight.com Chief executive, MBI Conor Dignam Printer Atlas Group, Street 26, Al Quoz 4, PO Box 14833, Dubai, +971 4 340 9895, admin@atlasgroupme.com
WAITING
(India) Shoreline Entertainment. 92mins. Drama. Dir: Anu Menon. Cast: Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Arjun Mathur. A retired professor, whose wife has been in a coma for months, meets a terrified young wife whose husband is in the same condiction after a sudden accident. Can two lonely strangers support each other? Cinema of the World Madinat Theatre PUBLIC
Screen International London 1st Floor Unit F2/G, Zetland House, 5-25 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4HJ Tel: +44 20 3033 4267 Subscription enquiries Tel: +44 1604 828 706, help@subscribe.screendaily. com
in association with Chime Consulting
December 11, 2015 Screen International at Dubai 15