from indiewire

by Mark Rabinowitz

After about 24 hours in Dubai attending the 7th annual Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), I realized that the trip was going to redefine three words, minimum: Surreal, contradiction and ironic. At that was before I’d seen a film.

Like any other festival in the world, there are things to be critical about at DIFF and I’ll get to them later, but their hospitality cannot be beat. Due to their relative remoteness from Europe and the US, the festival is forced to fly in and host many guests and journalists which is the only way they could likely get as much coverage as they do. There is also a longstanding tradition of hospitality in the Arab world as well as in Islam, and DIFF embraces that tradition.

We were greeted at the gate and ushered to a lounge to wait while our passports are checked and bags collected, and while I am not sure doing it myself wouldn’t have been quicker, the offer of juice and pastries in a quiet setting at the end of a long flight was welcome. The hotel at which most of the industry are billeted, the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, seems to be modeled on a Vegas-style family hotel (sans gambling, of course) and is loaded with Brits, Aussies, Chinese and seemingly most of all, Russians. In fact, it’s such an international crowd that each day the hotel’s daily info sheet states how many different nationalities are staying (and working) at the hotel. Every day each count was in the 60s!

DIFF’s opener this year was the perfect film to kick off a festival. “The King’s Speech” is well made, well acted, fun and leaves the audience in a good mood which is more than I can say for most openers. The opening night party on the beach was my first exposure to the customer service that would inform the entire 9 day stay and which fellow journalists, jury members and filmmakers would remark upon…more