(MENAFN- Arab Times) The Dubai International Film Festival is inviting everyone to experience the true magic of the silver screen at its purpose-built, state-of-the-art screening venue, the Madinat Arena at Madinat Jumeirah, the home of the Festival. Red Carpet Galas and special film screenings will bring the Arena to life as it provides a perfect backdrop for the Festival.
Masoud Amralla Al Ali, DIFF's Artistic Director said: "DIFF is a Festival in the truest sense of the word € it is a time for the city to come together and enjoy everything that is wonderful about the world of film. The Madinat Arena adds something very special to the screenings that are taking place all over the city and its programme showcases the very best that the Festival has to offer - whether that's internationally-acclaimed titles, the latest children's movies or work from home-grown UAE talent."
The screenings at Madinat Arena will kick off with the highly anticipated neo noir thriller 'Zinzana', from Emirati director Majid Al Ansari, on Thursday Dec 10, and will be followed by Ayman Jamal and Khurram H. Alavi's animated creation 'Bilal', a visually stunning action-adventure film.
Friday 11th welcomes a triple bill of galas beginning with a Children's Gala for Steve Martino's 'The Peanuts Movie' which brings Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang to life on the big screen. This will be followed by Peter Landes' dramatic thriller 'Concussion', starring Will Smith, and Larry Yang's Chinese drama 'Mountain Cry' which will close the day.
Taking place on Saturday 12th, DIFF's second Children's Red Carpet Gala begins proceedings with Thale Persen's festive family film 'Valley of Knights; Mira's Magical Christmas'. Director Matt Brown's inspirational biopic 'The Man Who Knew Infinity', starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons will follow, and the day will be brought to a close by the suspenseful and dramatic award-winning film 'The Clan', by Argentinian director Pablo Trapero.
Tragic
'Halal Love' € a compelling tragic comedy from Lebanese director Assad Fouladkar € will screen on Sunday 13th followed by the comedy drama 'Family Fang', from acclaimed actor and director Jason Bateman, whose all-star cast includes Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken and Bateman himself.
Monday 14th will enjoy two screenings: 'The Daughter', a dramatic family thriller from director Simon Stone, starring Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush; and the searing drama 'Spotlight' from Oscar nominated director Thomas McCarthy, starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams.
Australian actor, director and writer Jeremy Sims' heartwarming epic 'Last Cab to Darwin' and gripping drama, 'Truth', starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett from American director James Vanderbilt, will showcase on Tuesday 15th.
Fans can get a slice of Red Carpet Gala glamour for just AED 100, with regular arena screening tickets at the Arena priced at AED 50. The exquisite Madinat Arena, which will seat 1,800 spectators, is sure to create memorable experiences for audiences with a stellar line-up of films for all to enjoy.
Macedonia's Oscar entry for best foreign-language film measures the lingering psychic cost of an authoritarian body politic in the hyper-vigilance of a deputy minister and his wife during one long night officially earmarked for celebration. Inspired by a novel by Czech writer Jan Prochazka (previously filmed by Karel Kachyna in 1970's "Ucho"), this sinus-clearing satire from writer-director Ivo Trajkov is set in the early 1990s, when the country broke with the Communist Yugoslav Federation to become an independent republic. Cleverly switching between noir thriller and absurdist black comedy in a way that throws into relief the perils of conformity and paranoia in a transitioning state, "Honey Night" offers hope for the clarifying power of art, if not necessarily for the future of Macedonian democracy.
Set in the Macedonian capital of Skopje in the early 1990s, this boisterously savage black comedy unfolds around two seemingly unconnected causes for celebration. A swank party for the national holiday of the newly independent nation coincides with the 10th wedding anniversary of deputy minister Nikola (Nikola Ristanovski) and his wife, Ana (Verica Nedeska). They make a handsome if robustly unappealing couple. Nikola is a vain, conniving operator who cuts corners at home and work to further his career and his roving eye. Ana's a neglected drunk whose favorite sport is embarrassing and humiliating her husband. While their young son sleeps unheeded upstairs, the couple endures a very long night of knives together. When they aren't cooking up conspiracy theories to explain lost keys or sudden power outages, they upstage one another in an orgy of mutual recrimination for the many betrayals in their marriage.
Purge
Rumors of a purge of top brass have sped around the party, rendered in black-and-white flashbacks that highlight the intimate connections between Nikola's billowing paranoia and the couple's private turmoil. Returning home in full evening regalia, Ana and Nikola ratchet up their petty bickering into a full-blown settling of marital accounts, interrupted by visits from a band of party animals who may be friends, foes or hit men. Is the soused former army buddy who returns Nikola's house keys a friend bearing warnings, or a flunky of the new regime?
Trajkov's adroit juggling of fog-bound noir scenery with domestic farce underscores the semiotic hell that imprisons this hapless pair as they read coded significance into every household creak and groan, and every befuddling radio news item about Macedonia's embrace by NATO on the one hand and our "short-lived democracy" on the other. In a panicked effort to conceal his past adherence to Soviet-style socialism, Nikola sets about flushing potentially incriminating documents down the toilet. The toilet gets the worst of it, and though the couple periodically closes ranks against a real or imagined common enemy, so, too, does the marriage - depending on who has the advantage in the couple's diminishing grasp of reality.
In a cunning final turn of the screw, we learn whether Nikola has reason to feel safe or sorry. But as the hapless apparatchik explains to his wife, "The truth has nothing to do with it." You can pick your aphoristic lesson from the wickedly delicious denouement: Beware of what you wish for; just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you; keep your enemies closer; and, inevitably plus ca change, etc. "Honey Night" brings ghoulish elan to what might otherwise be a glum treatise on the close kinship between political madness and human frailty. On the plus side, the fact that Macedonia submitted this gleefully self-critical satire for Oscar consideration surely counts as a modest barometer of political hygiene.
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