I wrote a letter to the Festival de Cannes. I asked it to help save cinema by not going online.
Read MoreWait, did you really think the Dubai International Film Festival was coming back?
Because if you did, I’ve got some swampland in Florida I’d love to sell you. Along with a few magic beans that grow into diamonds.
Honestly, from the moment I stepped off that last red carpet at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, in 2017, I knew the festival was done. In fact, the headline of my wrap-up piece for the 14th edition of DIFF was “Following the Dubai International Film Festival, Where Does Arabwood Go Now?” Yes and that was months before the official decision to skip the festival in 2018 and reformat its approach. There was a dark cloud in the crisp desert sky and it loomed above the festival throughout. My headline was just what my heart told me to write, regardless of my personal feelings towards that weird last edition.
Read MoreThe last of the Cannes Diaries 2018: When all else fails, you can find me at the movies
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Actually, this edition of the Festival de Cannes turned out to be a missed opportunity, for media and juries alike to truly take charge of the #TimesUp movement and make of it a lasting course instead of a passing trend. Yes, there were stairs filled with women in pretty dresses, there were hotlines that we could call if we felt threatened or harassed, but ultimately the big prizes went to the big boys. As they have for every edition of the festival, except once, in 1993 when Jane Campion made history as the first and only woman to win the Palme d’Or.
Yet personally, I loved Cannes more than ever this year. I had a soft place to fall, in the form of a wonderful group of friends I spent my free time with, eating dinners we cooked together and drinking our morning coffee back at our cozy apartment with one breathtaking view. I mean, just look at the Disney fireworks for 'SOLO: A Star Wars Story' display from our terrace!
Read MoreFollowing the Dubai International Film Festival, Where Does Arabwood Go Now?
“Are you ready for us to make history again?!”
As I stepped into one of the magnificent Majlis — literally translating as a “place of sitting” from the Arabic — a meeting room inside the Madinat Jumeirah complex to catch up with the Chairman of the Dubai International Film Festival, Abdulhamid Juma uttered those words. I was taken aback for a moment and then I remembered that throughout the six years I’ve attended DIFF, I’ve sat down with him and together, we’ve come up with some of best questions about Arab cinema, its place in the world and its importance in dispelling stereotypes and breaking down walls.
This year, I came to DIFF with a heavy heart and I leave it still wondering if all the efforts — personal and collective have been worth it. We’ve witnessed how easily the mighty of the film stratosphere can be taken down in Hollywood when no longer of use to their business partners, destroying careers that should be looked at with respect, regardless of these men’s questionable behavior. We seem to have forgotten that “the casting couch” is a term as old as the movies themselves. Now we just “throw out the baby with the bathwater” as the old saying goes...
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Couldn’t Have Done It Without You, Madinat Jumeirah!
Anyone who has ever had to travel for work knows, deeply and personally, how important a hotel room can be.
For me, while I spent eight nights and nine days at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival, the Mina A’Salam hotel, in Madinat Jumeirah provided a home away from home, the perfect place to get away from it all and write, not to mention my very own soft place to fall. All rolled up into the perfectly glamorous package of a luxury 5-star plus hotel.
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and Why It Is a Fashionista’s Dream Come True
I wasn’t a huge fan of the last installment of ‘Star Wars’ titled ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’, which closed the Dubai International Film Festival in 2016. I found the chemistry between Felicity Jones and Diego Luna like a couple of fingernails dragging on a blackboard. When they were — **spoiler alert!** — done away with, I was actually kind of happy. And that’s not how you should feel about intergalactic heroes, am I right?
Fast forward one year and I found inspiration and fun in another chapters of the ‘Star Wars’ saga which has been going on since I was a child!
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Superstar Bushra, Costume Diva Alexandra Byrne and the Power of Great Women
We need more women film writers. Repeat after me. We need more women film writers and when they are published, those few random times, we need to support them.
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Swarovski, Morgan Spurlock, ‘The Man Behind the Microphone’ and Cinemas in Saudi by 2018
What is heritage and how important is our connection to the past in shaping who we will be in the future? And if our ideals seem to clash with what our leaders are encouraging, or we simply can see beyond the chaos — are we right? Or does that make us just different... Those are all questions that have come up in the last 48 hours for me, at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival.
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Sir Patrick Stewart, ‘Sharp Tools’ and ‘Harry Potter’ at the Opera
This place never ceases to surprise me. HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has stated that he wishes the Emirate to become an open air art gallery by the time it will host Expo 2020. And in fact, at every corner during my stay here for the Dubai International Film Festival, I’ve experience art, beauty and film.
I mean, where else in the world can you sit listening to Sir Patrick Stewart talk film and life, watch a cool cultural Emirati film like ‘Sharp Tools’ by Nujoom Al Ghanem and then walk over to a turtle sanctuary just behind your hotel, at Jumeirah Al Naseem all in one day? If you said Dubai, you got it.
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Rob Reiner’s ‘Shock & Awe’, Claes Bang, Q’orianka Kilcher and Working Through the Madness
When the whole Hollywood sexual predator news broke back in October, I received a message from a colleague I’m connected with on Facebook. He pointed to the fact that as a woman, in light of the recent revelations, I would now find it much “impossible” to get one-on-ones with male stars and directors. The statement hit me and I felt an immediate pang of anxiety. I mean, my job as a woman, a blogger, someone who holds on to her personal opinions and is proud of going against the current if need be is already pretty difficult as it is. To add to that burden — because lets face it, even when diversity and/or equality are celebrated and demanded in the arts, it never really manages to trickle down to the media side of things — would only make my work impossible.
But DIFF has proven my colleague wrong, of course. I’ve never had more access, and more professional intimacy than what I’ve experienced here so far. I mean, the kind of face to face talks that mean so much to a writer, because in the end, you know they will help the pieces write themselves. The kind of great human connections that we all strive to create, across cultures, with different personalities and among our fellow humans.
What’s that saying DIFF? “Film Will Find You”? Yes, it always does, and helps me to discover the way back.
Read MoreThe Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Cate Blanchett, Sir Patrick Stewart, Irrfan Khan and ‘Hostiles’ Kick Off the 14th Edition of DIFF
Lets face it, it’s a frightening time to be alive. If a certain North Korean dictator doesn’t nuke us into oblivion first, maybe the recent decision regarding the status of Jerusalem by our President might just turn the wraths of the entire Muslim world population upon us. Admit it, you’re beginning to think this way, even if just a little bit...
And yet, here I am in the midst of the Arab world and film, the power of great cinema is helping me to get a grip on what it’s really like, once we step away from the frenzy of inflated CNN headlines and the anger that these days appears to be the sole motivation for so much around us. Because when we dig deep into our collective hearts, we all feel the same way, and if poked, we all bleed the same color blood.
Even Shakespeare knew that to be true, more than five hundred years ago.
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