Last night saw the Gala Opening of this year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival. The red-carpet event featured screenings of Secretariat and The Accordion, with film stars from near and far in attendance. Adrien Brody and Clive Owen, along with Khaled Abol Naga, Suheir Hamad and Sulaf Fawakherji(Jury Members), Ahmed Helmy, Fathi Abdel Wahab, Hassan Kashesh, Lebleba, Mustafa Shaban, Nezha Raheel, Qusai Kholi, Rashid Assaf, Sumaia Al Khashab Susanne Najm Al Dien, Wael Ramadan, Yehia El Fakharanyand Yosra graced the red carpet.
The cast members of films selected for this year’s program on the red carpet included: Hassan Mrad, Julia Kassar, Karman Lubus, Muhanad Quatish, Saloum Hadad, and from the GCC, Abdul Mohsen Al Numer, Ammar al Khawajah, Dawood Hussain, Khaled Al Braiki, Muhamad al Mansour and Huda Husain.
Today (Friday, October 15) marks the debut of the Festival’s newly launched New Horizons / Afaq Jadida Competition for first- and second-time directors, which opens with a screening of In Your Hands, 6:30 p.m., at the Abu Dhabi Theater. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the film’s producer, Severine Garusso. In Your Handsexamines the fluid, mutually treacherous relationship between victim and captor. Kristin Scott Thomas stars as a surgeon kept prisoner by a young man who holds her responsible for the death of his wife. In their isolation and confinement, the tragedy of the past these two share haunts the tense present. When attraction develops, they are forced to confront a passionate and violent contradiction.
For people who missed yesterday’s Opening festivities, today’s program provides a chance to catch a second screening of the opening film Secretariat. Also, you canget up close and personal to some of last night’s celebrity guests at two special events taking place at the Abu Dhabi Theater this afternoon: an Encounter With Clive Owen (2:00 p.m.) is moderated by Ed Lake (The National editor); followed by an Encounter With Yosra and Yehia El Fakharany (4 p.m.), moderated by Khalid Abol Naga.
Furthermore, today’s busy event schedule includes two Gala Screenings, for which Adrien Brody and Carolyn Lane (Wrecked), as well as Nandana Sen and Indraneil Sengupta (Autograph) are set to hit the red carpet.
Wrecked by Michael Greenspan, isa brutal, minimalist indie thriller, in whichAdrien Brody (The Pianist) takes an adventurous turn. Brody’s character wakes up trapped in a mangled car at the bottom of a wooded slope in the middle of nowhere – and there’s a corpse in the back seat. Worse, due to shock-induced amnesia, he doesn’t remember who he is or how he got there – but the evidence points to a deadly crime. With this barebones scenario established, the film proceeds in increments, with every drop of water consumed; every inch moved a painful ordeal. It’s grimly fascinating to observe this lost soul as he struggles for identity – and for survival.
Friday night also features a Gala screening of Autographby Srijit Mukherji, this year’s surprise additon to the Festival line-up.Taking a captivating, thoughtful approach to celebrity culture and the pitfalls of the film world, Autographtells the story of a hapless young director, who, by a stroke of luck, manages to win over the reigning matinee star of Tollywood, as the Bengali film industry is commonly referred to, with his unlikely idea of making a film about a film star inspired by two classics of art house cinema: Satyajit Ray’s Nayak: The Hero(1966) and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957). After casting a leading actress, the trio embarks on a journey of emotional and professional upheavals as the film’s production gets underway. Essentially a film within a film, the story splits into two parallel strands, playing with the blurred boundaries between reality and the make-believe world of Tollywood stardom. Screening at 10:15 p.m., Marina Mall 5) and followed by a Q&A with Srijit Mukherji (director), Nandana Sen (actress) and Indraneil Sengupta (actor).
This year’s Narrative Feature Competition kicks off with two outstanding films, screened at two of the Festival’s most scenic locations. One of them is Incendies, by Denis Villeneuve, Canada’s official entry for the 2011 Oscar nominations, which screens at 5:30 p.m. at the Emirates Palace. Based on a play by Canadian-Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, the film tells the story of a mother’s cryptic will, forcing her grown children to confront the prospect that the father they thought dead is alive, and that they have a brother. Unable to leave the question unresolved, one of the siblings travels to the Middle East on a daunting search through the past.
The first day of the Narrative Feature Competition also includes a screening of Taming by Nidal Aldibs (9:30 p.m. Abu Dhabi Theater), followed by a Q&A with Nidal Aldibs (director), Mohanad Kotesh (actor), Salloum Haddad (actor), and Haitham Hakki (producer). Tamingtells the story of a young man, who engages in an escapist romance with a beautiful girl in defiance of her family. But after a catastrophe in the desert, the pair are mysteriously separated. Fear of retribution overcomes devotion and the hapless man is led down a twisted path of isolation and psychological games by an old hermit who has regrets of his own. Dreams, desire and despair intertwine in this captivating existential drama. Furthermore, today’s Festival program features the first screening of the 2010 edition of “What in the World Are We Doing To Our World?”, a special program dedicated to films that address some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues.
Think Global, Act Ruralby Coline Serreau(3:45 p.m., Marina Mall 4) presents the organic food argument from a political perspective – suggesting that industrial food production, with its reliance on heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers, is not merely destructive and harmful to our bodies, but downright evil. The film explores various organic farming models and, within this framework, it is telling that ancient techniques of farming and land management seem to provide the best way forward for food production.
The 2010 Documentary Competition also opens today, with two fascinating films by filmmakers from China and Germany. Emma Tassy and Sheng Zhimin’s The Empire of Art? takes a hard look at the Chinese contemporary art scene. In the 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, China has become one of the largest art markets in the world; yet the art remains stereotyped in the West as “exotic.” In frank interviews, photographers, painters and performance artists describe the paradox of creating honest work in the strange zone between totalitarianism and capitalism, address the nagging issue of identity politics and give insight into their sardonic, grand and often disturbing work. The Empire of Art? will be screened at 7:15 p.m. at Marina Mall 1, followed by a Q&A with Olivier Mille (producer) and Sheng Zhimin (director).
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