DIFF’s soul and spirit is not about celebrity glitz but about providing a platform for Arab filmmakers. That was the take-home quotient of the week-long festival that concluded on Wednesday night, with an award ceremony to honour the finest talent from the Arab world, Asia and Africa.

Six years later, that is precisely the accomplishment of DIFF. This is not a festival of celebrities alone; this is not the Cannes of the Middle East. DIFF, essentially, is the first film festival that brings together the talent of over 3 billion people in the Arab world, Indian Subcontinent, Africa and Asia.

The Film Festival, unlike its counterparts in the rest of the world, also does not cater to niches. Cannes, arguably, is about glitterati; Sundance is about new wave cinema. But DIFF is about a global audience, which only Dubai, a city of over 150 nationalities can provide.

This was evident in the mix of celebrities who graced the red carpet and attended the festival over the past
seven days.

The opening charm was provided by the Indian film industry led by its patriarch Amitabh Bachchan and the next day by the teenybopper sensation Ranbir Kapoor.

Towards the close of the festival, taking centrestage was the film icon of the Arab world Omar Sharif along with a bevy of stars from Egypt and the rest of the region.

If in the initial years there was Hollywood trooping down, DIFF seems to have realised that film festivals need not have to pamper to star egos; it can instead focus energies on promoting home-grown talent.

However, celebrity-lovers weren’t disappointed as Gerard Butler, the star of ‘The Ugly Truth’, brought his inimitable brand of humour to Dubai having an audience of die-hard fans in splits throughout his ‘In Conversation’ session. Mandy Moore, Christina Ricci and Matt Dillon added to the star power, alongside Christopher Lambert representing French cinema and Lluis Homar, the Spanish star of Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces.

DIFF brought in some 168 films this year, which were represented by dozens of directors, from masters such as Yonfan of ‘Prince of Tears’ and Shaji N.Karun of ‘Kutty Srank’. The films offered audiences the opportunity to interact with directors, question them about their creative pursuits and get
to understand their cinema sensibilities better.

But what happened away from public eye is perhaps what makes the festival truly definitive. DIFF’s Dubai Film Connection, the seed fund programme, and Dubai Film Market for facilitating trade and distribution, were the most successful ever among all years. Participation at Dubai Film Market, measured by the number of film screenings, nearly tripled this year, from 1,336 in 2008 to over 3,100 this year.

This year, DIFF also saw the returning home of its talent find, as the Dubai Film Connection driven films such
as ‘Every Day is a Holiday’ and ‘Amreeka’ were screened to critical and mass acclaim.

Most importantly, however, DIFF 2009, which had to weather storms, literally, and the undercurrent of Dubai bashing, showed that creativity can be a great leveler.

news@khaleejtimes.com