 highlights

The Abu Dhabi Film Festival director Ali Al Jabri guides us through this year’s event.

Ali Al Jabri, The director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images
Powered by automated translation

The Abu Dhabi Film Festival director Ali Al Jabri talks about this year’s event

Organise yourself

We worked very hard on the scheduling so that it appeals to everyone. Most of the films are screened to ensure maximum coverage and we tried to make sure the films don’t clash with each other.

First in Abu Dhabi

We have 11 world premieres. The fact these films chose the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for their world debut shows how the festival has developed. For film lovers, you really can’t get films fresher than this.

You can only see them here

As part of the preparations, the management team and I travel to some of the world’s biggest film festivals and check out the entries. Over the past year we went to Cannes, Berlin and Toronto and saw some great films that went on to win awards. The festival is bringing some of them here. For many of them, it is the only place to see such films in the country, so don’t miss the opportunity.

Good things come in small packages

The international short films are also something to see. This is a genre that is always growing and in the festival you see a lot of these gems from the Emirates and the rest of the world.