This 11th annual Dubai International Film Festival will open on December 10 with James Marsh's critically acclaimed biopic of British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything.
The movie premiered at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, and immediately triggered a frenzy of Oscar predictions, with Marsh, the lead actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, the music composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and the film’s producers and writer tipped for awards.
The honour of closing the festival falls to Disney's latest, Into the Woods, which will receive its first screening outside of the United States. It will be the second time in as many months that a Disney movie will have closed a major film festival in the UAE, following animated adventure Big Hero 6's starring role, also an international premiere, at Abu Dhabi Film Festival in November.
Things get a little darker in Dubai with Into the Woods, a musical comedy that blends popular fairy-tale characters with the story of a childless couple seeking to escape a wicked witch's curse. The star cast includes Meryl Steep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt and Chris Pine.
Two major Disney movies closing UAE festivals in the same year would seem to be a sign of developing relations with the studio following May's Star Wars: The Force Awakens shoot, also a Disney production, in Abu Dhabi. It hasn't escaped too many movie buffs' notice that the internet has been rife with rumours that the first full trailer for the new Star Wars film, the seventh episode in the series, is due to be screened with Into the Woods when it goes on general release on December 25 – although the Star Wars director J J Abrams announced this week that a special teaser trailer will be released in select cinemas on Friday, November 28.
Unsurprisingly, Diff was unable to comment on whether we may get a sneak preview of the full trailer a week early.
Sandwiched between the two marquee bookends, meanwhile, audiences can look forward to a further 118 features, shorts and documentaries from 48 countries, in 34 languages, during the eight days of the festival, including 44 world premieres.
The Frasier star Kelsey Grammer will be at this year's event, attending the red carpet world premiere of his new banking comedy Breaking the Bank.
The Into the Woods star Blunt looks set for a busy week. As well as attending the screening of her film, the Devil Wears Prada star will sit on the jury for the third IWC Filmmaker Award, which offers a US$100,000 (Dh367,000) cash prize to the winning filmmaker. Last year's award recipient Waleed Al Shehhi's film Dolphins will debut at this year's festival on December 12.
Other celebrities joining this year's judging panels include the Factory Girl director Mohamed Khan, who will be joined on the Muhr Shorts and Emirati section by the Emirati filmmaker Mohammed Hassan Ahmed.
The Muhr Feature panel will be headed by Lee Daniels, the producer and director of the Oscar-winning Precious and The Butler. He will be joined by the Dutch cinematographer and film director Leonard Retel Helmrich, the Algerian director Malik Bensmail, the Oscar-nominated actress Virginia Madsen and the Lebanese actress and director Nadine Labaki.
Other highlights of the red-carpet gala screening at Madinat Jumeirah include Russell Crowe's directorial debut The Water Diviner on December 11, the Benicio del Toro starrer Escobar: Paradise Lost on December 13 and the critic-splitting The Imitation Game, in which Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the British Second World War Enigma code-cracker and computing pioneer Alan Turing. The film, also starring Keira Knightley, has sparked debate about its factual accuracy – judging by early reviews – because the national hero is portrayed as a Soviet spy.
On December 14, Diff will partner with Dubai Cares for the fourth year to host the charitable Global Gift Gala. It will be held in support of the Eva Longoria Foundation, which provides education and entrepreneurship opportunities to Latin-American women; the Sunrise K’ Foundation, which raises awareness of childhood glaucoma; and the Global Gift Foundation. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to the Egyptian actor Nour El Sherif, for his five-decade career, during which he has worked on more than 100 films.
The 11th Dubai International Film Festival runs from December 10 to 17. For more information and the full schedule, visit www.dubaifilmfest.com
