Samuel L. Jackson, Luke Hemsworth, Andie MacDowell, Melanie Griffith and Nicole Scherzinger are just a few of the Hollywood stars who will be in town for the 13th edition of Dubai International Film Festival in two weeks.
The festival will take place at Madinat Jumeirah between December 7-14. One-hundred-and-fifty-six films from 55 countries will screen, including 57 world premieres and 93 regional premieres.
Opening and closing night films
John Madden’s political thriller Miss Sloane will open the festival on December 7. The film, starring Jessica Chastain, follows a ruthless lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who fights to pass legislation in favour of gun control.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will close the festival on December 14. Rogue One is an upcoming space opera and the first of an anthology of Star Wars standalone films. Starring Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker, it centres on a group of Rebel spies who come together to steal the blue print to the Death Star, the Empire’s latest weapon of destruction.
Lifetime achievement awards
Samuel L Jackson will be this year’s Hollywood recipient of the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He will accept the accolade at an invite-only opening night ceremony.
Jackson, who celebrates a 68th birthday next month, has been a prominent figure in the film industry since the 1990s.
He rose to popularity with films such as Jungle Fever, Patriot Games and the Quentin Tarantino cult classic Pulp Fiction, which earned him his first and only Oscar nomination. Jackson is also a four-time Golden Globe nominee.
A prolific actor, Jackson has more than 100 diverse credits to his name, from iconic thrillers such as Shaft to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Nick Fury character.
Last month, Diff announced that they would also bestow a Lifetime Achievement Award on Indian actress Rekha, 62, who has been in more than 180 films over the course of 40 years, and French-Lebanese composer Gabriel Yared, 67, who won a Grammy and an Oscar for his score of The English Patient in 1997.
Meet the stars
Fans will have the chance to hear Jackson speak about his career on December 9, as part of an In Conversation event where the actor will sit down for an in-depth, onstage interview at the Madinat Souk Theatre.
Westworld stars Jeffrey Wright and Luke Hemsworth - brother of Chris and Liam Hemsworth - will sit down for an In Conversation event on December 11. This, after an episode screening of their HBO sci-fi thriller.
Other stars expected to attend Diff next month are Bill Nighy, Ranveer Singh, Vaani Kapoor, Tuba Buyukustun, Farhan Akhtar, Sharlto Copley, Michael Smiley, Enzo Cilento and Dave Johns.
Global Gift Gala
Melanie Griffith, Will Poulter and Nicole Scherzinger will attend the annual Global Gift Gala on December 12, hosted by the honorary chair of the foundation Eva Longoria. The exclusive black-tie charity event will be held at The Four Seasons Resort at Jumeirah Beach and will raise money for four continents, in partnership with Dubai Cares, Harmony House (India), the Eva Longoria Foundation (USA and Mexico) and the Global Gift Gala Casa Global Gift.
Meet the directors
Twenty-five panel discussions will take place at Dubai Film Market (DFM), a networking section located at the centre of the festival.
Events include ’In the Director’s Chair’ with Oscar and Bafta-winning director Asif Kapadia, best known for his documentary Amy, based on the late singer Amy Winehouse, and Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson, whose film Room screened at Diff’s opening night last year.
An In Conversation with the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, will also take place.
Free Beach screenings
This year, Diff will continue to hold free outdoor screenings at The Beach opposite JBR throughout the festival. Ahead of each film, they will screen a Unicef short film titled ‘In their own voice: aspirations of Syria’s children amid uncertain future’, which sheds light on children who are impacted by the Syrian crisis.
December 7: Comedy-drama Burn Your Maps, starring Vera Farmiga and Jacob Tremblay
December 8: Animated film The Red Turtle by Michael Dudok de Wit
December 9: Soulful documentary Mail Blues by Lutz Gregor
December 10: 1964 western A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood in his first lead role
December 11: Creative documentary Egyptian Jeanne d’Arce by Iman Kamel
December 12: Adventure documentary Eagle Huntress by Otto Bell
December 13: 1966 superhero film Batman: the Movie, the first full-length theatrical adaptation of the DC character
December 14: Romantic sci-fi film The Space Between Us, starring Asa Butterfield and Gary Oldman
Daily screenings at DIFF
Starting November 25, festival-goers can buy tickets online to attend several screenings a day at Madinat Jumeirah, some of which will have red carpets. These include:
December 8: Hindi romantic comedy Befikre, starring Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, and film adaptation Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ang Lee
December 9: Swallows and Amazons, a Children’s Gala screening; The Worthy, a dystopian thriller by Emirati filmmaker Ali Mostafa; and Their Finest, a British romantic comedy starring Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin
December 10: 3D animated film Rock Dog, featuring the voices of Luke Wilson and J.K Simmons; the musical comedy-drama La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone; the provocative Egyptian drama The Preacher, starring Amr Saad, Dorra Zarrouk and Ahmad Magdy; and the biographical drama The Founder, starring Michael Keaton
December 11: American drama Manchester by the Sea, starring Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams; Lebanese comedy Solitare, starring Julia Kassar; and A Monster Calls, starring Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones
December 12: Argentina’s Oscar entry, The Distinguished Citizen, directed by Gaston Duprat, and Tom Ford’s psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals, starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal
December 13: Biographical sports drama The Bleeder, starring Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber and Ron Pearlman, and the ensemble drama Collateral Beauty starring Will Smith, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Naomie Harris and Keira Knightly
Arab films
62 films from the Arab region including fiction, non-fiction, feature length and shorts, will compete as part of the annual Muhr Competition. “It is important that we continue to tell the stories of this region with the world, and DIFF is proud to provide a platform for those voices to be heard,” Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Diff artistic director.
Virtual reality
Diff introduces DIFFerent reality this year, which features ten of the world’s most advanced virtual reality films. The line-up also includes The Machine to be Another, a multi-sensory interactive system that promotes empathy and tolerance by allowing users to step into different perspectives, and DiVR – Blue Effect, an atmospheric sci-fi wave shooter.
Lumiere! Inventing Cinema
A special presentation involving 98 restored films from 1895 and 1905 will take place at Madinat Souk Theatre on December 8, starting at 4pm. The films, now in 4k, were created by the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, the French pioneer filmmakers who invented the Cinematographe (the word ‘cinema’ is derived from this), a camera-projector combination that changed the film world forever. The films will be presented by Thierry Fremaux, the General Director of the Cannes Film Festival and the Institut Lumiere in Lyon.
Don’t miss it
Diff will screen films at Madinat Arena, Madinat Theatre, Souk Madinat Jumeirah, Vox Cinams, Mall of the Emirates and The Beach - opposite JBR. Buy tickets online starting November 25 from dubaifilmfest.com or in person from Vox Cinemas Mall of the Emirates. Tickets will also be available starting December 6 at Madinat Arena and December 7 from Madinat Theatre, Souk Madinat Jumeirah.
