The Muhr AsiaAfrica programme at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is out and includes some of the most celebrated films in world cinema this year.
The line-up includes Ilo Ilo, set in Singapore and the first film by Anthony Chen; Andrew Worsdale’s Durban Poison, a noir romance about the marginalised white underclass of his native South Africa; and the Bangladeshi writer and director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s Ant Story, about a young graduate trying to make it in Dhaka.
There’s also Shakram Mokri’s Fish and Cat, fresh from taking a top award at this year’s Venice film festival. Based on a grisly true story, it follows a group of students camping in the Caspian region of Iran.
The award-winning French filmmaker Dyana Gaye’s debut feature Under the Starry Sky focuses on the lives of three young people whose criss-crossing paths intersect between Africa, America and Europe.
The veteran Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang’s poetic Stray Dogs follows a homeless father and two children who inhabit the margins of Taipei.
Then there’s The Lunchbox, the much-acclaimed feature by the Indian filmmaker Ritesh Batra, about a wrongly delivered lunchbox in Mumbai that connects an elderly man, played by Irrfan Khan, to a young housewife.
The Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun returns to DIFF with his fifth feature film, Grigris, about a 25-year-old man with a paralysed leg who dreams of being a dancer.
Thou Gild’st the Even is a fable from the Turkish filmmaker Onur Ünlü, set in a small Anatolian town where all the inhabitants have supernatural powers.
The crime thriller Thuy, by Jae-Han Kim, follows a Vietnamese woman investigating the suspicious death of her Korean husband.
The Muhr AsiaAfrica programme presents US$50,000 (Dh183,000) to the Best Film, a Special Jury Prize of $40,000, $15,000 for Best Director, and Best Actress and Best Actor each take away $8,000. The winners will be announced at the closing ceremonies of the festival, which runs from December 6 to 14. Visit www.diff.ae for screening schedules.
[ artslife@thenational.ae ]