Besides shopping, folks in Dubai go crazy for films and celebrities, so the 8th Dubai International Film Festival is a big deal here. It opened with Tom Cruise and the Dubai premiere of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. Dubai features prominently, including harrowing stunts around the Burj Khalifa, but we won't be seeing the film here anytime soon as the showing was by invitation only.
I just got around to watching what was billed at the festival two years ago as the first UAE/Emirati movie, called City of Life. It features an ensemble cast and intermeshed stories of a privileged young Emirati who lives it up too much, an Indian taxi driver who dreams of being a Bollywood star, a pair of Romanian flight attendants, and a wealthy western expat playboy. All very stereotypical, with lots of cliched dialogue, but even so I really enjoyed it because it features Dubai with all of its flaws, including a horrific car crash. It's not a flattering portrayal, which surprised me since you don't see that very often around here, the local media being always upbeat. (Not to mention the occasional story of someone getting arrested for disparaging the country.) But then again it's fiction, so I guess there's more leeway. Or maybe the movie is just dying a quiet death. I couldn't find it for sale anywhere--I had to rent my copy.
I hope with celebrities like Tom Cruise and Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Kahn as a draw for the festival, the region continues to support filmmaking with projects exploring the real issues. I'd love to see the next film by the director/writer of City of Life, Ali F. Mostafa. He is said to be working on a comedy featuring a road trip with four Arab friends in a sober version of "The Hangover."
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