Just a few years ago, the regional film festival landscape was a rather noisy affair. With each of the three main film events at the time – the Dubai International Film Festival, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) – eager to generate as much buzz as possible, there was a sense that they were trying to outdo one another, to attract the bigger stars and the bigger movies.
Excess all areas
There were even occasions where they appeared to stand on each other’s toes in the process – as when the inaugural Doha festival in 2009 opened with the biopic Amelia despite the fact that the film’s main star – Hilary Swank – had already appeared on the red carpet in Abu Dhabi a few weeks earlier. Given the three festival’s proximities – both geographically and calendar-wise – it felt excessive.
Four years on and things have thankfully changed. Each festival has seemingly found its own niche within the grand cinematic spectrum and settled down. This December’s Dubai festival – the eldest of the trio at 10 years old – has continued its trend of being the main Hollywood attraction, although it’s impossible to ignore the hugely influential industry element running alongside.
After some recent changes, Abu Dhabi has taken a more regional route, offering a superb platter of important films from across the Arab world, many supported by its own Sanad fund.
And at Doha, where this year it parted ways with Tribeca and split into two festivals, the emphasis now is nurturing young talent and galvanising the local community.
Focus on youth
Ajyal, the first of these two festivals, starts tomorrow and is a five-day event focusing on youth. Sixty-five films from 30 countries are taking part, kicking off with The Wind Rises, the latest acclaimed offering from the anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro) of Studio Ghibli.
“The focus is children and youth, but I always say that you cannot ignore the parents or the schools and teachers, so it’s really the whole community together,” says Fatma Al Remaihi, the festival’s director.
“But the theme, the focus, is on the youth and what they go through every day. And these issues are universal. If you bring a film from Holland about bullying, you can relate it to Doha because we have these problems.”
Al Remaihi says that each annual Ajyal will have a theme, with this year’s – as emphasised by the opening film – being a celebration of anime. Other classics screening from this genre include Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, also by Miyazaki, plus Horus: Prince of the Sun, Panda and the Magic Serpent and Voices of a Distant Star. There will also be an Otaku exhibition, featuring work by various regional artists, an Otaku Cosplay event and several anime workshops, including history and stop-motion.
Local productions
As with previous Doha Film Festivals, there’s a Made in Qatar section, this time screening the works of winners from a recent 48-hour film competition and from a 70-day filmmaking challenge. There’s also Al Rayyan Productions’s Hero and the Message, commissioned to celebrate last year’s Qatar National Day, about a brother and sister who travel back in time to the 19th century to watch the country being founded.
With youth the central component of the festival, it is the local youth who will make the most important decisions at the end of the festivities. “Our jury will be made up of young men and women, aged 8 to 21,” says Al Remaihi. “They have the big responsibility of voting and choosing the best filmmakers at the festival.”
For families, too
The action this time around will be purely confined to Katara, the vast cultural village by the coastline where the Doha Film Institute is based. Like last year, there will be a dedicated family weekend, with free-of-charge activities such as interactive installations, games and filmmaking workshops for children. Previous years have seen these weekends absolutely bustling with people and have really given the festival its true community feel.
“We’re focusing on the things that were very popular when we did DTFF before and one was these family days,” says Al Remahi. “Youth is very important segment within the community, so we really need to work with them. They’re the next generation of this industry we’re trying to build.”
The focus might not be on the premieres, the red carpets or the A-listers in Doha this year. But in channelling its energies towards children, Ajyal is probably liable to generate just as much noise.
• From tomorrow until Saturday. Visit www.ajyalfilmfestival.com
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.”
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
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What’s in the budget?
- Freeze in income tax thresholds results in 780,000 more basic-rate, 920,000 more higher-rate and 4,000 more additional rate payers
- National Insurance charged on salary-sacrificed pension contributions above annual £2,000 threshold
- Rates on property, savings and dividend income to rise by 2 percentage points
- Electric cars hit with 3p per mile tax from April 2028
- Two-child benefit cap is removed, costing £3bn
- 5p cut in fuel duty is retained until September 2026
- Debt to rise from 95 per cent of GDP to 96.1 per cent by the end of the decade
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PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
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Director: Laila Abbas
Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum
Rating: 4/5
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
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