Gulf Film Festival to include record number of UAE films

Spotlight falls on record number of festival screenings.

The Caller, a mystery thriller produced by Amina Dasmal, is among a record number of UAE films screening at the festival. Courtesy of Gulf Film Festival

DUBAI // A record 45 productions by UAE filmmakers will be screened at the Gulf Film Festival - well up on last year's total of 36.

More Emirati films than ever before - 22, up from 13 last year - have been entered for the main competition, rather than the student section.

One notable work is The Caller, a UAE-Puerto Rico-UK collaboration produced by Amina Dasmal, an Emirati who lives in London.

The mystery thriller, directed by Matthew Parkhill, tells the story of a divorcee, played by Rachelle Lefevre, who receives phone calls from a woman who says she is in the past, and who plots revenge when she finds herself being ignored.

Dasmal has produced four previous films - The Boy in the Oak, Siren, Trash Humpers and Cochoci.

"This is different, having an Emirati producer producing films, not in the UAE, but an English film," said the festival director, Masoud Amralla al Ali. "I think this gives a different aspect to the whole movement.

"We also have a feature documentary called Hamama, about an elderly Emirati woman who heals people with traditional medicine. Many people from the old generation used to go to her to get herbs. It's a very authentic film; you really go deep into this woman's thinking - it's very interesting."

Hamama was directed by Nujoom Alghanem.

Another documentary, Moath bin Hafez's Life of Stone, also focuses on an older member of the community - a man who collects rocks for use in buildings.

"This is about an old Emirati who digs in the mountains and collects the stones," Mr al Ali said. "But now no one is using him because all the machines have come, but he is still digging and doing this job. It sounds like he is addicted to this even though he sells them for dirhams only."

Ali al Jabri's Calendar is a three-minute documentary about recent events in the region - but audiences should not expect any newsreel footage or eyewitness interviews.

"It's about what happened in Egypt, Libya, wherever - it's a very intensive look," Mr al Ali said. "This is a surprise - it contains a calendar which is flipped and with each date you see what happened in Egypt or wherever that day; you see some reaction to it."

Mr al Ali said the quality of the UAE films submitted to the festival was rising year by year.

"This year I think the short competition is the best we've had, and many films are documentaries, a genre we didn't have much here. I think we need more documentaries because they go deeper into actual life."

Abdulhamid Juma, the festival chairman, said that until 2001 only 58 UAE films had been made in the country's history - but over the four years the festival has been running, 153 Emirati films had been selected for screening.

"If we look, compared with only 10 years ago, I think we have come a long way," he said.

Shivani Pandya, managing director of the Dubai Entertainment and Media Organisation, which runs the event said: "The festival has given Emiratis a platform to really speak and present their films.

"Emirati participation is increasing; they're more aware. There was always participation and an interest through volunteering at the festival, and now we're actually seeing their works coming out."