Global Stories At The Gulf Film Festival

Inaugural Run Brings Artists from Around the World

The upcoming Gulf Film Festival, which will be held from April 13 to 18 at the DUCTAC theatre in Mall of the Emirates, is an excellent chance to see a sampling of work from around the world in the Out of Competition segment, comprised of stories that originate from the UAE and as far away as Canada and China.

The UAE offers a diverse assortment of short tales in this segment: Hani Al Shaibani’s Jumaa and the Sea follows a poor fisherman who does his best to make his children follow the path he has chosen for them; On the Line, by Moath Bin Hafez, is a journey into the superficial world of the cell phone craze that has already won several awards in the Emirates Film Competition; Majid Abdulrazak’s Arabian Sands is set in the Southern Arabian deserts of the late 1940's, and tells the story of Sir Wilfred Thesiger; Ritu Motial’s Walls takes viewers through a turning point incident in the life of James Jonathan, a soldier in captivity; and the main character in Lewis De Mesa’s The Ex Girlfriend is haunted by his ex-girlfriend in his new apartment.

Holding up the international film quota, the delightful Canadian comedy Nancy Loves Miss Brown, by Jane Meikle, follows a 10-year old schoolgirl as she searches for her beloved missing teacher; Siddharth Sinha’s Unravel, India’s nomination for an Oscar in the short film category, is a coming of age story; Chinese filmmaker Ling Che’s Soul Carriage depicts a young employee who asks his boss for a loan and gets something else entirely…a corpse; Koutaiba Aljanabi’s Baghdadi Correspondent follows Awad Kadhom, a journalist working in Baghdad who suffered an attempted kidnapping that nearly lost his life. Saudi filmmaker Mousa Jafer Al-Thunayan’s Left Over Bread depicts a charitable man who must find out who is stealing the bread that he leaves for the poor; and Rami Kodeih’s A Shaherezade Tale tells the story of death in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where sometimes reality becomes a modern tale.

Several of the Out of Competition titles originate from Kurdistan. From Soran and Adnan Mardookhi, And Thus I was Born tells the story of Kurdistan and its long history of struggles against a rugged environment. Likewise, Bijan Zamanpira’s A Window Facing the Sun is a prayer by the people of for rain for their dry land; and Bijan Zamanpira’s Mirror and Water shows an old man who carries a magical mirror.

From Iran, Roqiye Tavakkoli’s Party follows a young boy who must carry his grandmother on a difficult and complicated journey to see his mother. Symphony, by Kasra Karimi, depicts four characters and their behaviour as they wait for the moment of death, while The Zero, by Sajjad Shahedy amd Bagh Khandan, shows two children struggling to fix the satellite dish who find that help could come from the source they least expect—their Granny. In a similar vein, Roqiye Tavakkoli’s Water is the story of a young boy struggling to carry a water jug from the well to his home. Sattar Chamani Gol’s Border depicts an Iraqi family who are prevented from taking their new bride into Iran by frontier officials. My Tree by Sara Syadatnejad depicts the power of the imagination to create life out of death and decay.

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