Credits roll on eighth Abu Dhabi Film Festival

After 10 days and 197 films, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival has wrapped for another year.

The Jordanian Bedouin cast of the prize-winning film Theeb. Courtesy Abu Dhabi Film Festival

One of the biggest winners of the night was the ­Theeb team, with director Naji Abu Nowar following up his Venice success by picking up both the Fipresci Award for Best Narrative Film and the Best Film from the Arab World award in the New Horizons section. Another double winner was Andrey Zvyagintsev's Russian drama Leviathan, which also won at the London Film Festival. The movie added the Narrative Competition's Black Pearl Award for Best Film and a Best Actor Award for star Alexey Serebryakov to its honours. Wim Wenders' visually stunning The Salt of the Earth won the Audience Choice Award.

The festival opened with Ali F Mostafa's From A to B, the first Emirati film to ever open a major festival in the UAE, and the movie proved so popular, selling out the first two screenings, that organisers had to add a third to meet the demand. Further good news came with the revelation that distributor Empire had picked up the movie for distribution across the Middle East, with a cinema release slated for January 1.

Festival director Ali Al Jabri was delighted with the proceedings.

“This is one of the most successful editions of the festival in all these years. This magical nine days went by in the twinkle of an eye and the magic of the cinema surprised us every time. We’ve had films conveying tragedy and joy, and they’ve opened our eyes and addressed our hearts and minds.”

Some unlikely stars

Among the true stars of the festival was Santos de la Torre, a Mexican artist and member of the indigenous Huichol people. He is the subject of the documentary Echo of the Mountain, which describes how he was overlooked after creating a huge, beautiful mural for the Paris subway, seen by millions of people every year. The artist wasn't even invited to its 1997 unveiling.

Back home the artist lives without running water and since he doesn’t know his birthday, his best guess at his own age is 73. Despite his slight size, de la Torre’s bright traditional dress stood out at the buffet table. As for his stay in the luxurious Emirates Palace, he joked “the bath is as big as my house”.

Another unlikely celebrity was Nicky Salapu – a goalkeeper famous for conceding more goals in one match than anybody else in the history of international football. The American Samoa national keeper let 31 balls into the net in a 2001 showdown with Australia, the biggest international defeat ever.

The team were sitting bottom of the Fifa international rankings when a UK film crew showed up to shoot Next Goal Wins, a document of their battle to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. The crew captured their first win in competitive football, a historic 2-1 victory over Tonga, but they didn't even make it past the preliminary round. Nicky's undeterred though, and says he's "raring to go to 2018 – just give me the call".

The Jordanian bedouins who star in Theeb may traditionally live a quiet life in the desert, but the first-time actors took to the red carpet and were pretty much ­ever-presents at the nightly rounds of parties. According to the film's producers, their highlight, however, was spending time with camels and falcons on a trip to the Abu Dhabi desert.

Animal magic

Some of this year's most unlikely stars weren't even human. Tackling the heavy subject of the first Palestinian Intifada, The Wanted 18 uses talking animated cows to explore the issues in a light-hearted and impartial commentary on the passive resistance of the people of Beit Sahour. Elsewhere, the cat in Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night seems to have come straight from a course at the Lee Strasberg Institute. The cat seems to judge the tone of each of its scenes perfectly and many directors watching the film must have wished they could get their human charges to perform with such nuanced subtlety and poise.

Mutual respect

It was great to see so many filmmakers appreciating each others' work. Among the hits with industry types was Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu, a double award-winner at Cannes, which shows how the ancient town was overrun by Islamic militants in 2012. A number of filmmakers and stars were spotted in the stalls for the second screening, including the Dior and I director Frédéric Tcheng and frequent Dardenne brothers collator Fabrizio Rongione.

Personal triumphs came for the legendary Hollywood producer Edward Pressman, who was recognised for an 80-film, 40-year career with a Career Achievement Award from the festival – and announced he's not nearly done yet, with three big movies in the pipeline including a reboot of 1994's cult hit The Crow.

The influential French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb was also recognised for career achievement while elsewhere, the first lady of Iranian cinema, ­Rakhshan Bani-E'temad returned to fiction film making after an eight-year absence with the well-received Tales.

The movies

From A to B aside, all eyes were on the other regional world premieres of Egypt/UAE co-productions El Ott and Um Ghayeb, which picked up the Fipresci for Best Documentary; the UAE documentary Sounds of the Sea; and the rousing welcome given to the stars of insightful autism documentary As One.

Programmers did an extraordinary job of bagging some of the biggest award-winners from this year's festival circuit to screen in Abu Dhabi. Among the biggest draws were Cannes Palme d'Or winner Winter Sleep; the Swedish black comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Bench Reflecting on Existence, Golden Lion winner at Venice; Chinese noir Black Coal, Thin Ice, Golden Bear winner at Berlin; and Point and Shoot, Best Documentary winner at New York's Tribeca.

Other major movies set to hit UAE screens later this year, but seen first at ADFF, include thriller '71, James Gandolfini's swan-song The Drop and Brit brat flick The Riot Club.

With additional reporting from Rob Garratt