Dubai to air controversial films at new festival

DUBAI - The Gulf Arab city of Dubai launches its first international film festival next month, screening many controversial films to Arab audiences for the first time.

Organisers say the festival, whose 75 mainly Arab and South Asian films will be followed by seminars, hopes to foster a debate on relations between the West and Arab and Islamic countries.

But the Dec. 6-11 event, in which movies will not face the censorship usually practiced by local authorities, will also offer Arab audiences a chance to become more aware of the diversity of the Arab world and see films that touch on the thorny issue of relations with the United States and Israel.

It will be the first screening for 13 films in the Middle East and for over 30 films in the conservative Gulf region.

Debuting films include "Control Room", a documentary about Arabic channel Al Jazeera's coverage of last year's Iraq war, and acclaimed British film "The Hamburg Cell", Antonia Bird's look at the al Qaeda cell behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Although Washington has accused Al Jazeera of provoking anti-US sentiment in the region, the taboo-breaking Qatar-based broadcaster has also riled many Arab governments with its critical coverage of Arab politics and society.

"This is one of the first places I wanted to take it," director Jehane Noujaim, whose film has not aired in her native Egypt despite scoring US box office success, told Reuters.

"The subject was in such demand in the United States because of the new perspective it offered for them ... But you need to have real champions of these films (in the Middle East)."

Critics say "The Hamburg Cell", which examines the motivations of the men who carried out the attacks, was unlikely to get an airing in the region, where governments are under US pressure to co-operate with the "war on terror".

Saudi Arabia, which has no public cinemas, this year jailed a cleric for making comments sympathetic to the attacks on US cities, which killed around 3,000 people, on Al Jazeera. Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Many Arabs resent the United States over a perceived hostility to Islam and backing for Israel against Palestinians.

"It's impossible for Arabs to see these films anywhere else. They are not shown in cinemas or on television," Libyan filmmaker and organiser Mohamed Maklouf told a news conference in Dubai on Sunday.

The event will also see the regional premiere of Italian director Saverio Costanzo's "Private", an Arabic-Hebrew-English mix portraying a Palestinian family held hostage by Israeli soldiers. It won this year's prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

"This is a chance for Arabs to look at the Arab world, to see the work of Arab filmmakers in Europe, in exile and in their own countries," organiser Masoud Amralla told Reuters. "We need to educate audiences. In these dark ages anything can be forbidden."

Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's 12" will screen one night after its world premiere and Hollywood stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Morgan Freeman and producer Harvey Weinstein are to attend.

Organisers say the festival, which has cost some US$6 ($8.46) million to stage and seen heavy international promotion, will not run a competition in its first year at least.

- REUTERS