Amos Gitai has never been far from our thoughts, or out of cinematic radars, with a film premiering almost every year at major film festivals like Venice and Cannes -- now he's bringing his tryptic of films about a house in Jerusalem to the stage in Paris and to La Biennale Architettura 2023.
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Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian announcing this year’s Competition & Encounters line up on Monday
All the latest Berlinale titles added to Competition and Encounters
While many of us may be concentrating on the awards announcements, the Berlin Film Festival reminds us where it all starts from, and why these worldwide events are so important. Dare I say, more than the awards…
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Marrakech Atlas Workshops announces 25 projects participating in upcoming 6th edition
The films — hailing from 11 countries with 11 helmed by women filmmakers — include the highly anticipated ‘Motherhood’ by Meryam Joobeur, Tunisian filmmaker Ala Eddine Slim’s next project, and Erige Sehiri’s follow up to her critically acclaimed ‘Under the Fig Trees’.
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Elia Suleiman, photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
"If a director can come away from the event enchanted and inspired": Elia Suleiman and Hanaa Issa talk Qumra 2018
They say if you want to learn about something, go to the source.
For filmmakers in the Middle East, but also around the world, Elia Suleiman has long been the Oracle, the man with a knowledge to create momentous cinema, cinema that can change the world. Suleiman is the most brilliant source today of modern Arab cinema, the kind that breaks across borders and tears down the divide -- as his frequent trips to international film festivals and award ceremonies have proved.
So I thought, if it works for filmmakers, it could work for me. I shall ask Suleiman about Qumra myself, so I can unravel the mystery of this yearly event held in Qatar, under the auspices of the Doha Film Institute. I mean, the DFI has been very open and forthcoming about their week-long-mentorship-slash-industry-meet-and-greet-slash-film-connection event, but I still hadn't found a fascinating enough explanation of it in the media. One that would hold my attention and really explain the ins and out of Qumra.
Until I met Suleiman, DFI's Artistic Advisor and Hanaa Issa, Deputy Director of Qumra and Director of Strategy and Development at Doha Film Institute during Berlinale. One Sunday morning in Berlin, a leisurely breakfast talk later and now eagerly anticipating the start of Qumra in Doha, I finally understand.
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A still featuring Noel Sto. Domingo from Lav Diaz' 'Season of the Devil'
Photo © Giovanni D. Onofrio
The Berlinale Diaries: Hulu's 'The Looming Tower' and a Lav Diaz virgin no more!
The 21st century version of the all-American question "where were you when JFK was assassinated?" is "what were you doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center?"
Some of us watched the towers disintegrate before our very eyes, our landscape changed forever, and it's a vision, a feeling we will carry inside our hearts for as long as we live. The smell throughout downtown Manhattan, the lines of demarcation -- complete with checkpoints -- between the northern and southern parts of the city but also the newfound sense of camaraderie we bestowed upon each other to merely get from day to day, is also what I remember from those days.
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
A view of Madinat Jumeirah on the opening night of the 14th Dubai International Film Festival
The 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.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF DISNEY
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren
The 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!
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
Sir Patrick Stewart and HE Sheikh Mansour Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum
The 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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A still from Rok Biček’s ‘The Family’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘The Family’, Struggles of ‘The Poetess’ and ‘A Letter to the President’
Away from the main competition films featured in the Locarno Film Festival are two important sidebar sections which are filled with works of art worthy of the numerous audiences who attend their screenings. La Semaine de la Critique, Critics’ Week, and the Open Doors programs offer each and separately a fresh insight into modern groundbreaking filmmakers who will be the future maestros of our times. With Open Doors that even goes beyond the films we are watching on the big screen now, but bear with me before I get to that.
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