For the first time, the Tribeca Film Festival is hosting an event in Doha, Qatar from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1.
Qatar and the Emirates are becoming a hotbed of finance for the film industry as the region expand its interest in the filmmaking business. Not only has the UAE become a prime area for producers and backers of Hollywood and art house projects, but Qatari directors are also getting attention on an international scale due to the influx of funding.
Three years ago, the daughter of Sheikh Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, was an intern for TFF in New York (she is also the Chair of the Qatar Museums Authority). While gaining knowledge of the American film industry, Mayassa told the head director of TFF, Amanda Palmer, about starting a high caliber film festival in her homeland. The groundwork was set, and slowly the festival was put together. Setting up the festival was a challenge and over 1500 volunteers had to be recruited.
To open the festival, the first screening of Amelia in the Middle East will be shown. The film is a biopic on the famed female pilot, Amelia Earhart. Directed by Indian filmmaker, Mira Nair, it will premier at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Many local and regional filmmakers will be given opportunities to showcase their work on an international scale. Some first-time filmmakers, as young as 16, are producing 1-minute films to be shown around the city. The making of the shorts can be seen here.
The festival’s technologically advanced LED red carpet will spectacularly light up as the likes of TFF founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, and Hollywood alum Ben Kingsley and Danny Boyle, stroll across it. The magic carpet was designed to change colors as patrons of the festival walk across it.
More than 30 films from all over the world are slated for viewing. The Doha TFF will have the freshly released films, A Serious Man by the Coen Brother’s, and Coco Before Channel by Anne Fontaine. New documentaries directed by Spike Lee and Oliver Stone will also be shown. Kobe Doin Work by Lee is internationally premiering and South of the Border is having its first Middle East showing.
Some independent films by lesser known directors will also have their international debut nights, Road Movie by Indian director Dev Benegal, and Sin Nombre a film about Mexican immigrants crossing into the US by Cary Fukanaga
There will certainly be considerable focus on films from the region. Which a have been getting much more international attention as of late. And the world Premiere of Assila by Iraqi-Hungarian Director Thamer Al Zedi, which is an animated film about an abandoned foal facing death, rescued by villagers and
As homage to the mystique of Middle Eastern storytelling, The 1969 classic The Mummy, restored by Martin Scorsese, will receive a special showing at the end of the festival.
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