And they include a certain favorite animated robot of mine, plus the return to the Marvel universe by a beloved actor, and a performance out of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ — all the stuff geek dreams are made of!
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Thoughts about the Greta Gerwig/Margot Robbie 2024 Oscars snub
Wait, did you really think awards were fair?
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Photo courtesy of the Red Sea Lodge, an initiative by the Red Sea International Film Festival
The Red Sea International Film Festival announces Red Sea Lodge second edition
The Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has just announced their Red Sea Lodge edition for 2021.
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Katara Opera House on the opening night of Ajyal Film Festival in Doha, Qatar
Doha's Ajyal Film Festival Opening Night: We may be socially distanced but our cinematic hearts beat as one!
This year, the Doha Film Institute has managed to put together a hybrid online and in person (for Qatari residents only) version of its annual Ajyal Film Festival dedicated to young audience and there was even a red carpet last night and an opening ceremony. I’m sharing the video of the latter below.
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Rome Film Festival Diaries: 'Judy', Renée Zellweger and the wonder of fashion in cinema
I had a craving for ‘Judy’ ever since I heard the project announced. Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland on the big screen seemed extraordinary to me. And yet, I also wondered if it would satisfy my cravings. Would it focus on the camp, would it give me the fashionista angle I craved or feature tired old costumes that made La Zellweger seem like a caricature of the great, albeit lost diva?
Well, ‘Judy’, directed by Rupert Goold, with original music by Gabriel Yared, featuring Zellweger herself singing and wearing some beautifully modern costumes by Jany Temime and wigs plus makeup by Jeremy Woodhead was everything I wanted it to be — beautiful, glamorous, sad and poignantly modern.
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The Qumra Diaries: Discovering Agnès Varda in the land of cinema
It is obvious from the moment one steps on a Qatar Airways aircraft that cinema is important in Doha. I mean, just going through the entertainment system on my particular flight, I found ‘Rebecca’ by Hitchcock, Barry Jenkins’ hauntingly touching and all too true ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, Paul Dano’s intimate portrayal of a family struggling to remain a single nucleus ‘Wildlife’ and even the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner ‘Green Book’.
Qatar knows good cinema and nowhere is that better understood than in the welcoming arms of the Doha Film Institute.
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The National Youth Film Academy roundtable luncheon at Brasserie Blanc, Southbank
The London Diaries: the National Youth Film Academy helps cinema professionals find their working community
When he founded the National Youth Film Academy back in 2011, Chief Executive Rob Earnshaw spotted a gap within the cinema industry in the UK. There were jobs being offered, and people craving to fill those positions both in front and behind the camera, yet absolutely no bridge between them. In fact, in his mission statement Earnshaw talks about building that bridge.
““The National Youth Film Academy is dedicated to building bridges between education and employment in film. Our team works tirelessly to locate, nurture and promote talented, aspirational actors and filmmakers. But most importantly we discover people with the right attitude to be employed in British film.””
— Rob Earnshaw, Chief Executive, National Youth Film Academy
In the last eight years, the National Youth Film Academy has become the most important community to which aspiring film professionals in the UK can belong. And beyond, because of course, the film community — once bridges are formed to connect the jobs with the job seekers — is the largest open circle of artists in the world.
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Inspired: Highlights from the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam
I’d long heard about the Rotterdam International Film Festival and yet had never personally been here. IFFR will hereafter be a much craved stop on my itinerary of world cinema events. I can’t wait to see what next year has in store.
So what makes this cinephiles’ festival filled with independent gems, languid culture-filled days and inspiring evening talks by the masters so addictive? Well, that — what I just said. Turns out there is no festival in the world quite like IFFR.
And here are a few favorites of mine from this year’s edition.
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul talks to Richard Peña during a Qumra Masterclass
Photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
The Qumra Diaries: Wisdom from the Masters with Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Andrey Zvyagintsev
The great thing about an event like Qumra, the yearly industry meet-up organized by the Doha Film Institute to inspire and connect filmmakers with the world of cinema business, is that one gets to discover wonderful gems. And not only the up and coming filmmakers whose projects were featured in this fourth edition, some of which are definitely heading to Cannes! I also had the leisure to rediscover Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (‘Leviathan’ and ‘Loveless’ among others) and hear his insight during one of the six masterclasses, and actually uncover ApichatpongWeerasethakul, watch his dreamy work for the first time. And what a wonder that was! As Italian Maestro Gianfranco Rosi admitted to me later, I also remained enchanted by Weerasethakul’s ‘Emerald’ a dreamy look at a rundown motel, featuring flying particles and voiceovers, which I’m still working through and thinking about quite a few days later.
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Tilda Swinton and Cameron Bailey
The Qumra Diaries: Tilda Swinton, the Museum of Islamic Art and to Doha, with love
From the moment I boarded the Qatar Airways plane in Fiumicino, I realized I was being transported somewhere special. I also knew my journey, as both a film writer and a human being, would be a life changing one.
To begin with, the airline offers Karak chai -- a milky tea infused with cardamom or saffron to taste -- and a choice of films that included 'Murder on the Orient Express', the new version by Kenneth Branagh. Not what I would have gone to the movies to watch it but at 30 thousand feet, flying over lands and bodies of water I'll probably never set foot on or swim through, cup of fragrant tea in hand one's taste adjusts. And I even found myself crying through some of Branagh's Hercule Poirot moments.
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Elia Suleiman, photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
"If a director can come away from the event enchanted and inspired": Elia Suleiman and Hanaa Issa talk Qumra 2018
They say if you want to learn about something, go to the source.
For filmmakers in the Middle East, but also around the world, Elia Suleiman has long been the Oracle, the man with a knowledge to create momentous cinema, cinema that can change the world. Suleiman is the most brilliant source today of modern Arab cinema, the kind that breaks across borders and tears down the divide -- as his frequent trips to international film festivals and award ceremonies have proved.
So I thought, if it works for filmmakers, it could work for me. I shall ask Suleiman about Qumra myself, so I can unravel the mystery of this yearly event held in Qatar, under the auspices of the Doha Film Institute. I mean, the DFI has been very open and forthcoming about their week-long-mentorship-slash-industry-meet-and-greet-slash-film-connection event, but I still hadn't found a fascinating enough explanation of it in the media. One that would hold my attention and really explain the ins and out of Qumra.
Until I met Suleiman, DFI's Artistic Advisor and Hanaa Issa, Deputy Director of Qumra and Director of Strategy and Development at Doha Film Institute during Berlinale. One Sunday morning in Berlin, a leisurely breakfast talk later and now eagerly anticipating the start of Qumra in Doha, I finally understand.
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Milán Csordás in a still from 'Genesis'
Photo © Genesis Production
The Berlinale Diaries: Face to Face with German Films and 'Genesis' by Árpád Bogdán
There are several films this year at the Berlinale that explore the theme of family. Or rather, set out to redefine it. In 'Daughter of Mine', Laura Bispuri asks, cinematically, just who our mother is -- the woman who physically brings us into this world, or the person who rears us? For most of us they are both within one person, but in rare cases, it's not.
Also present during this 68th edition of the Berlin Film Festival is a sub current of childhood, attempting to view this chaotic, pretty damn ugly world of ours at the moment through a child's eye view. Wes Anderson kicked that off in style with the opening film 'Isle of Dogs' and now I keep finding myself looking at what I watch from his "I don't want to grow up" POV.
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The Berlinale Diaries: Karim Aïnouz, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Bryan Cranston and Liev Schreiber, oh boy!
The day started with a long, leisurely talk with Algerian-Brazilian, NYC-based filmmaker Karim Aïnouz and the two men who are the center of his latest film, 'Central Airport THF' -- Ibrahim Al Hussein from Syria and Qutaiba Nafea from Iraq. I won't talk about the film itself until it premieres tonight since the festival here in Berlin is quite strict about embargoes and more power to them for that! But I will say that some films really grow more special and important once the intention of their filmmaker becomes clear. In simpler words, sitting down with Aïnouz made his latest project wildly more interesting, because of who he is but also because of his subjects' backstories -- both refugees who are in Germany after escaping from their war-torn countries.
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Courtesy of the Berlinale
The Berlinale Diaries: The #MeToo movement and should the carpet really have been black?
This year, at Berlinale, the annual film festival held in Berlin, there is media chatter of a red carpet that should have been black in honor of the #MeToo movement. In my country a black carpet means someone died so I wonder, do we want to open a film festival, a festive event by definition, with a gloom and doom parade of stars on a drab black piece of carpeting? Isn't it enough that we woke up on its inauguration day to the news of yet one more totally avoidable shooting in the US?
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
A view of Madinat Jumeirah on the opening night of the 14th Dubai International Film Festival
The Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Couldn’t Have Done It Without You, Madinat Jumeirah!
Anyone who has ever had to travel for work knows, deeply and personally, how important a hotel room can be.
For me, while I spent eight nights and nine days at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival, the Mina A’Salam hotel, in Madinat Jumeirah provided a home away from home, the perfect place to get away from it all and write, not to mention my very own soft place to fall. All rolled up into the perfectly glamorous package of a luxury 5-star plus hotel.
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The Dubai Film Festival Diaries: Sir Patrick Stewart, ‘Sharp Tools’ and ‘Harry Potter’ at the Opera
This place never ceases to surprise me. HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has stated that he wishes the Emirate to become an open air art gallery by the time it will host Expo 2020. And in fact, at every corner during my stay here for the Dubai International Film Festival, I’ve experience art, beauty and film.
I mean, where else in the world can you sit listening to Sir Patrick Stewart talk film and life, watch a cool cultural Emirati film like ‘Sharp Tools’ by Nujoom Al Ghanem and then walk over to a turtle sanctuary just behind your hotel, at Jumeirah Al Naseem all in one day? If you said Dubai, you got it.
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COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
A still from Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Zama’
The Venice Film Festival Diaries: ‘The Shape of Water’, the Wonder of Netflix and Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Zama’
While my first 36 hours at the Venice Film Festival were filled with impossible sunshine and balmy heat, with the morning’s thunderstorms came both barometric relief but also some much needed introspection. I found myself in a deep, thoughtful place thanks to a beautiful meeting with Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and a morning screening of Netflix’s ‘Our Souls at Night’.
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A still from Rok Biček’s ‘The Family’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘The Family’, Struggles of ‘The Poetess’ and ‘A Letter to the President’
Away from the main competition films featured in the Locarno Film Festival are two important sidebar sections which are filled with works of art worthy of the numerous audiences who attend their screenings. La Semaine de la Critique, Critics’ Week, and the Open Doors programs offer each and separately a fresh insight into modern groundbreaking filmmakers who will be the future maestros of our times. With Open Doors that even goes beyond the films we are watching on the big screen now, but bear with me before I get to that.
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
A still from Rana Eid’s ‘Panoptic’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘Panoptic’, Cinematic Heroes and Dinner with a Diplomatic Legend
It is not often that a film journalist like me gets to experience the stuff hard core news are made of in first person, up close. I mean, I’ve been privy to some great cinematic history in the making and yes, I lived in NYC at the time of the attacks of 9/11 so I watched unmentionable horror unfolding before my very eyes, but in Locarno I feel part of another narrative that will affect the world as we know it.
I’m talking about the sudden decision by UN war crimes Special Prosecutor Carla del Ponte to quit her post, because she feels that Syria is now “a land without future”. Appointed to a three-member panel set up in August 2011 by the Human Rights Council to monitor the al-Assad regime and the unfolding civil war in Syria remotely, del Ponte represented the one slight hope for justice and yet today, that hope seems gone. Having previously sat on tribunals that investigated atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, del Ponte is most famous for putting Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević on trial at The Hague. And for having stood up to Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra and won, by simply walking away with her life. Now that’s a hero of a woman right there!
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘Gemini’, the Hotel Belvedere and a Movie That Shall Remain Nameless
My third day at the Locarno Film Festival started with the mind-blowing, wonderful directorial debut by actor John Carroll Lynch, which made me feel ‘Lucky’ all day long. It’s that good and if Harry Dean Stanton doesn’t get an Oscar nomination for playing the title character, I’ll go on a hunger strike — albeit one where I exclusively drink milk and diner coffee just like Lucky. If you haven’t kept up with the Diaries, you can read my thoughts on the film here.
The day went from great to better when I got to interview filmmaker Nadir Moknèche and his lead actor Tewfik Jallab about their film ‘Lola Pater’ on the patio of the Hotel Belvedere — a stylish place overlooking the Old Town that required a brisk walk up a steep hill in the midday heat and humidity to access. After the initial huffing and puffing, I realized that everything which goes up must come down, and the walk back into town after the inspiring conversations with two men who simply make the world better by being in it was soul soothing. I loved being an invisible witness to Locarno daily life, the man who watered his garden unaware of my presence to the left, the band rehearsing at a club a bit further down the hill on the right. There is a wonderful human aspect to the festival and that walk back into town made me reconcile with the world, for a few precious moments.
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