Tuesday, Nov 19, 2013
A documentary film set in the labour accommodations of the UAE will be one of the showcases at the Dubai International Film Festival’s (Diff) Arabian Nights Programming segment.
Champ of the Camp, directed by Mahmoud Kaabour, follows a Bollywood singing and trivia competition across more than 70 worker accommodations in the country, alternating between the X-Factor style suspense of the competition and the gritty reality of the workers’ environment.
Arabian Nights Programming celebrates films originating from the region or of its people by directors from around the world.
Other films in the segment include Nasreddine Bin Maati’s documentary A Doomed Generation, which charts the dreams and disillusionment of young people in post-revolution Tunisia, through the testimonies of five cyber dissidents who fought Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali’s censorship through social networks and the internet.
The Beekeeper, by Syrian filmmaker Mano Khalil, introduces Ebrahim, the beekeeper of the title, who lost his wife, children, country and more than 500 bee colonies in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, while Oscar-winner Caroline Link brings Exit Marrakech, about an estranged father and son which takes viewers from Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains. Link’s film Nowhere in Africa won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001.
Habi, the Foreigner is a tale of cultural reinvention by Maria Florencia Alvarez, which follows Analia, a 20-year-old woman from a small town in Argentina who travels to the city of Buenos Aires, where she stumbles across the city’s Muslim community and assumes the identity of ‘Habiba,’ a Muslim Lebanese woman.
Spanish directors Francisco Araujo and Ernesto De Nova bring Hassan’s Way, their debut feature about Hassan, who is unemployed after thirteen years in Spain and decides to go back home to Morocco.
Then there is prominent Yemeni filmmaker Khadija Al Salami, who returns to Diff with the brave documentary Killing Her is a Ticket to Paradise, which follows the young, outspoken writer Bouchra Al Maqtari over a period of two years, as she expresses publicly her pain and disappointment in the broken dream of freedom and democracy, and lives through the consequences.
Palestinian director Darin Al Baw’s Our Home We Cannot Walk To follows four sisters living in the conservative Naher El Bared refugee camp in Tripoli, Lebanon, who all develop a rare illness after the age of 25. The film follows the family’s lives as they battle against the odds.
Eric Baudelaire’s The Ugly One is part love story, part biography and part documentary, made in collaboration with Japanese New Wave filmmaker Masao Adachi, and tells the story of a couple struggling to piece together the fragments of an uncertain past.
There are also two short films in the programme: Ameenah Soulaiman’s documentary Shepherdesses, which narrates the inner thoughts of generations of women in a small, isolated village in Somaliland; and Musa Syeed’s The Big House, an allegory for the Arab revolutions, through the eyes of a young boy who finds a key to the empty mansion down the street, and lets his imagination run wild inside it.
Diff runs from December 6 to 14. For schedules and ticketing details, go to www.dubaifilmfest.com.
Staff Report
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