Abu Dhabi Film Festival - Headlining Features

Headlining Features

With a new branding scheme, and in its second year under the command of Executive Director Peter Scarlet, the 2010 ADFF is making a strong effort to breakout from a cluttered festival junket in the Gulf Region. This year there are six feature films and two documentaries that are attracting a considerable amount of industry buzz.

In a Better World by the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, takes a look at the lives of two families in small-town Denmark as they become intertwined through an uneasy friendship of two boys. The official Canadian entry to the Oscar also bows in Abu Dhabi. Incendies, directed by Denis Villeneuve, is based on a play by Canadian-Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, and tells the story of a mother’s cryptic will that forces her grown children to confront the prospect that the father they thought dead is alive, and that they have a brother. From Egypt is Messages from the Sea by Daoud Abdel Sayed, which follows the story of Yehya, who returns to Alexandria, the city of his youth following the death of his mother, where he encounters the new face of the ancient, portrayed as a decaying metropolis. Cirkus Columbia, is also considered an Oscar contender. Directed by Danis Tanovic, who won the Best Foreign Language Oscar with his film No Man’s Land in 2002. Cirkus Columbia follows a wealthy ex-pat who comes home to his small village in Yugoslavia in 1991.

Two documentary films, both dealing with current tensions in the Middle East, are highlighting the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace, directed by American director Harry Hunkele and produced by American Emmy-award winning producer Arick Wierson, tells the story of the secret closed door negotiations and power-plays that enabled U.S. President Jimmy Carter to forge the historic Camp David Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt. The film stars Jimmy Carter, former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer, and, in a rare on camera appearance, former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The Oath is documentary from director Laura Poitras that tells the tale of two men, Abu Jandal and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose meeting launched them on juxtaposed paths with Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, US military tribunals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are two major Hollywood features opening at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Making its world premier is Secretariat, directed by Randall Wallace, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich is an adopted biopic of the eponymous racehorse Secretariat. Making its Middle East premiere is Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn and directed by Doug Liman, the political thriller tells the real life story of Valerie Plame, American CIA agent outed by the Bush Administration in an effort to discredit revelations of falsified evidence in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.