For 14 years, December in Dubai meant movie premieres, packed red carpets and some of the biggest names in cinema descending on Madinat Jumeirah.
Now, after a decade-long absence, the Dubai International Film Festival is coming back. The event, which ran annually from 2004 until 2017, will return on December 8, 2027, organisers announced this week.
During its original run, Diff grew into far more than a parade of international stars. It gave Arab and Emirati filmmakers a platform, helped finance productions that went on to international acclaim, and brought together Hollywood, Bollywood and the Arab film worlds in a way few other events in the region could.
There were plenty of unforgettable moments along the way, from Tom Cruise returning to the city where he scaled Burj Khalifa and a young Ranveer Singh dancing his way along the red carpet, to landmark moments for Emirati, Saudi and Palestinian cinema.
As Dubai prepares to roll out the red carpet once again, here are some of the moments that defined the festival's first 14 years.
2004: Curtain rises on Dubai's first film festival
It all began on December 6, 2004, after almost two years of preparations.
For its first night, Diff rolled out a 40-metre-long red carpet at Madinat Jumeirah, where 800 VIP guests gathered including Arab and international celebrities. Among them were Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom and Emirati filmmaker Nayla Al Khaja, who opened the proceedings.
The choice of opening film also signalled what Diff wanted to be. Rather than launching with a Hollywood blockbuster, organisers selected Le Grand Voyage, French-Moroccan director Ismael Ferroukhi's story of a father and son travelling from France to Makkah for Hajj. The festival's theme was Bridging Cultures, Meeting Minds, with Arab cinema intended to sit at the heart of an otherwise international programme.
Egyptian screen great Omar Sharif was the first actor to be honoured by the festival, with a retrospective featuring films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Monsieur Ibrahim.
The first Diff screened 76 films and attracted more than 13,000 people. Thirty screenings sold out – a promising start for an event that would spend the next 13 years growing into one of the region's most prominent film festivals.
2007: George Clooney and Sharon Stone bring Hollywood glamour
By its fourth edition, Diff was already attracting some serious Hollywood star power.
George Clooney arrived in 2007 with Michael Clayton, which opened the festival with its regional premiere. It was something of a return to familiar territory for the actor, who had previously filmed parts of Syriana in Dubai. Clooney also took part in an onstage conversation about his career during the festival.
Joining him on opening night was Sharon Stone, with photographs of the pair arriving together providing one of Diff's more glamorous early red-carpet images.
Stone had another role during the festival. As amfAR's fundraising chair, she presided over the inaugural Cinema Against Aids Dubai gala, which raised $3 million for HIV and Aids research and prevention projects.
The star-studded event also drew Michelle Yeoh, Gloria Estefan, Hayden Christensen and Dita Von Teese, offering an early indication of how ambitious Diff had become.
2009: Omar Sharif meets Sheikh Mohammed
Even as international celebrities became regular fixtures on the Diff red carpet, the festival made celebrating Arab cinema central to its identity.
Few stars embodied the global reach of Arab cinema quite like Omar Sharif. The Egyptian screen legend, whose career stretched from classics of Egyptian cinema to Hollywood films, including Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, was one of the biggest names to attend the sixth Diff in 2009.
One of the enduring images from that year shows Sharif meeting Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, on the festival's closing night.
It was a fitting encounter for a festival that wanted to put Arab cinema and its stars on the same stage as the biggest names from around the world.
2009: City of Life gives Emirati cinema its moment
That same year also delivered a milestone much closer to home.
Emirati director Ali F Mostafa's City of Life had its premiere at Diff, giving the UAE's emerging film industry one of its biggest moments yet. The ambitious multilingual drama, filmed in Dubai, follows the intersecting lives of people from different backgrounds living in the city.
At a festival accustomed to welcoming movies and stars from overseas, City of Life demonstrated that Dubai could produce its own stories as well.
The film would become an important marker in the development of Emirati cinema, while Diff continued to expand its support for UAE filmmakers through initiatives including the Muhr Emirati competition.
2010: Colin Firth arrives with an Oscar-winner in waiting
Sometimes a festival screening becomes more significant in hindsight.
The King's Speech, starring Colin Firth as Britain's King George VI, opened Diff in 2010, with Firth among the stars attending the festival.
The film arrived in Dubai with considerable awards buzz, but had yet to complete the extraordinary run that would follow. A few months later, it won four Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Firth.
Diff audiences had seen one of the year's biggest films before it became an Oscar phenomenon.
It wasn't the first time. Two years earlier, the then relatively little-known Slumdog Millionaire had received a gala screening in Dubai before going on to dominate the awards season.
2011: Tom Cruise brings Mission: Impossible back to Dubai
Few images better capture Diff at the height of its international star power than Tom Cruise standing alongside Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed on the red carpet in 2011.
Cruise was in town for the world premiere of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which opened the eighth festival.
The choice of Dubai was particularly fitting. The blockbuster had been partly filmed in the emirate, with Cruise famously climbing, running across and rappelling down the exterior of the Burj Khalifa for what became one of the franchise's most memorable sequences.
The premiere brought the production back to the city where one of its defining scenes had been filmed and demonstrated how far Diff had come since its 2004 launch. The emirate wasn't simply hosting a Hollywood premiere; it had become part of the movie itself.
2011: Ranveer Singh dances his way along the red carpet
Cruise wasn't the only star who made an impression that year.
A 26-year-old Ranveer Singh – now one of the biggest stars in India – arrived at Diff for the world premiere of Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, his second film following his breakout debut in Band Baaja Baaraat.
Rather than simply walking the red carpet, Singh danced his way along it, entertaining the crowds and offering an early glimpse of the exuberance that would become part of his public persona.
“Every time there's an audience like this, I just feel compelled to break out in song and dance,” he told The National at the time.
Singh has gone on to become one of Bollywood's biggest stars, making his appearance a particularly fun snapshot of an actor at the beginning of his career.
2012: Wadjda shows what Diff could do beyond the red carpet
Some of Diff's most important work happened away from the photographers.
Haifaa Al Mansour's Wadjda became a landmark for Saudi cinema and female filmmakers in the region. The film, the first feature directed by a Saudi woman, received post-production support through Enjaaz, Diff's funding programme for Arab filmmakers.
It went on to win best film in the festival's Muhr Arab Feature competition and later became Saudi Arabia's first submission for the Academy Award for best foreign language film.
Its success demonstrated that Diff wasn't simply a place where Arab films were screened after they had been made. Through programmes such as Enjaaz, the festival was helping filmmakers get projects across the finish line and on to the international stage.
2013: Omar puts Palestinian cinema centre stage
Diff celebrated its 10th anniversary with a statement of intent.
Despite having its pick of major international titles, the festival chose Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad's Omar as its opening film.
The tense drama, about a young Palestinian man caught between love, resistance and betrayal, had received post-production support from Diff's Enjaaz programme.
It went on to win the Muhr Arab Feature award at the festival and was later nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign language film.
The wider programme that year demonstrated just how central Arab cinema had become to Diff. More than 100 Arab films were included among 174 titles from around the world.
2015: Zinzana fever hits Dubai
By 2015, Emirati films had become an increasingly central part of the programme.
Majid Al Ansari's psychological thriller Zinzana arrived at the festival after earning attention internationally, including screenings at Fantastic Fest in the US and the BFI London Film Festival.
But bringing it home was different.
The film played to a packed audience at Madinat Arena, and Al Ansari summed up the significance of the occasion by saying everything that had come before was “all just a rehearsal for Dubai”.
The National picked it as the movie moment of Diff that year – ahead of the splashier international films – while 12 Emirati films screened across the festival's 12th year.
2015: Shah Rukh Khan causes red-carpet chaos
There were Hollywood stars, Arab cinema legends and plenty of Bollywood royalty at Diff, but few could compete with the reaction Shah Rukh Khan elicited.
The Indian superstar's appearance at the Bollywood Gala on Fort Island in 2015 sent the crowd into a frenzy as fans attempted to get closer to him.
The National's reporter recalled being “literally knocked off my feet” by fans surging towards the actor.
It was a moment that captured the extraordinary relationship between Bollywood and its UAE audience.
2017: Star Wars closes an era
Nobody knew it at the time, but Diff's 14th year would be its last for a decade.
The festival bowed out in suitably blockbuster fashion, with Star Wars: The Last Jedi closing the event in December 2017.
Tickets for the gala were among the most sought-after of the festival, while Star Wars fans in costume joined the celebrations at Madinat Arena.
But the final ceremony also demonstrated how much Diff had grown beyond its international red carpets. It screened 140 films from 51 countries, while 13 films by Emirati directors were selected for world premieres.
Diff did not return the following year, and what initially appeared to be a pause eventually stretched into a decade-long absence.
When it returns in December 2027, it will do so in a very different regional film landscape from the one it left behind. But from Hollywood blockbusters and Bollywood frenzy to breakthroughs for Emirati filmmakers and films that helped reshape Arab cinema, it has plenty of history to build on.
