One of the frustrating factors of life for cinephiles in the UAE is that most of the movies being shown tend to be Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters rather than more intellectual films. Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s ambitious coming-of-age film, illustrates this perfectly.
The film has just won the best drama, best director and best supporting actress categories at the Golden Globes awards. But although it was briefly available on pay-for-view television, it has never had a cinema release in this country.
On these pages, we have called for a breadth of movies to be on local screens, with the blockbusters balanced against more esoteric and intellectual fare. We had a taste of this during the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, when a cinema was set up in Emirates Palace. Maybe it’s time to make this a permanent fixture? Boyhood would be a perfect film to kick it off.
