MUMBAI: The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is by no means over for 2007. There is still one more day of the best in international cinema, including the screenings of the winning feature and documentary films for the Muhr Awards for Excellence in Arab Cinema.
The awards screenings offer a chance to see the strongest new Arab cinema. The Bronze, Silver and Gold Muhr Documentary finalists will screen in Cinestar Mall of the Emirates theatre 2. The Muhr Awards features will be the last films to screen at the festival: the Silver and Bronze winners will screen at Cinestar, while the Gold feature will screen at the same time at the Souk Madinat Jumeirah theatre.
In the early afternoon, Night Shadows explores 24 hours in the life of five socially-outcast people in Geneva who defy that city’s picture-postcard image; the film screens at Cinestar Theatre 1. Am Ende Kommen Touristen (And Along Come Tourists) screens at Cinestar 7. The film presents the story of a sensitive young German man who avoids his military service by volunteering to be the caregiver for a former Auschwitz inmate who refuses to leave the camp where he was once imprisoned.
Viewers can catch Naalu Pennungal (Four Women), by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, at the Souk Madinat Jumeirah Theatre. The film depicts the subjugation of Indian women of the southern region of Kerala. At the same venue, Before the Rains portrays the dilemma of a married British colonialist in 1930’s India who is caught having an affair with his housemaid.
From Bangladesh, Golam Rabbany Biplob’s Swopnodanay (On the Wings of Dreams) depicts a poor villager whose life turns upside down when he finds a wad of cash; the film screens at Cinestar 1. In Cinestar 7, Intimate Enemies shows the clash between an idealistic young lieutenant and a cynical sergeant in the occupying French army during Algeria’s War of Independence.
The final non-competition feature in the festival will be veteran genre director Johnnie To’s super stylish action thriller Exiled, to show at Cinestar 7. The film follows two Hong Kong hit men on a new assignment: to take out a renegade member trying to turn over a new leaf with his wife and baby. Two former associates vow to thwart them at any cost.
