A lucky break for a new face in cinema

When Nazif Mujic picked up the Best Actor prize at the Berlin Film Festival, his director, the Bosnian Oscar-winner Denis Tanovic (No Man’s Land), had a surprising reaction.

“I laughed,” he says. “During the festival I had seen Matt Damon and Jude Law on the red carpet and all the cameras clicking. Nazif winning Best Actor was just brilliant.”

Mujic is not an actor by trade. Indeed, the title of the film, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, describes him perfectly. For Mujic is playing himself.

The film is a re-creation of a story that Tanovic came across in a newspaper one morning, which detailed how Mujic and his wife Senada (Senada Alimanovic) both Romani gipsies, were denied hospital treatment in Srebrenica because they had no medical insurance. Neither did they have the money enough to pay for the lifesaving operation that was needed when Senanda miscarried and was at risk of septicaemia.

“I was angry,” says Tanovic. “Being angry is never good, but I tend to do things when I’m angry. I was thinking: how can this happen? She almost died, for God’s sake. The doctor who eventually operated said: ‘What were you waiting for? She could have died!’

“I was thinking about this guy more than her. I’m a father and have children. I was thinking about how I would feel if my wife was dying, and she didn’t have cancer or anything and it’s an operation that can be done in every hospital and yet because I have no money she dies. What do you do?”

Tanovic went to see the couple. “They are both great, natural people,” says the director. “When I entered their house is the moment that I decided to make the film. He is madly in love with his wife, the way she cooks, everything. I asked them to make the film and at first they said no. I said: ‘Let’s at least try’. I asked them to tell me exactly what happened. We would go and shoot it. There was a maximum of two takes, because after that they would start acting.”

The film, which took just nine days to shoot at a cost of US$30,000 (Dh110,159), also won the Silver Bear, the Jury prize at the Berlin festival. Tanovic says he was fortunate to have discovered the story: “It just so happened that it was a day that I opened the newspaper. If that day I’d arranged to meet a friend for coffee maybe I would never have read it. I don’t know, is it coincidence or destiny?”

• An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker screens on Friday at 7pm in Marina Mall Vox 5 and on Sunday at 3.45pm in Vox 6. For more information, visit www.abudhabifilmfestival.ae

artslife@thenational.ae

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

A lucky break for a new face in cinema

Oscar winner Denis Tanovic made An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, screening at the Abu Dhabi Film Fesival, when he read an article about an injustice that made him angry - so he sought out the man at the centre of the story and convinced him to be in the film.