Cinema Akil in Dubai to host first Gulf German Film Festival next week
German-language films will be the focus of a new festival taking place for the first time in the UAE. Held in collaboration with the German Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region and Cinema Akil in Dubai, the Gulf German Film Festival will run from Thursday to Saturday next week. The films will be screened at Cinema Akil in Al Quoz, but will also be streamed online throughout the UAE and Bahrain.
The festival will open with Undine by Christian Petzold, which had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this year, where Paula Beer, who plays the titular role, won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. Petzold reimagines the myth of Undine as a modern love story. The mysterious water spirit becomes human when she falls in love with a man, but is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her. The first day will also present acclaimed director Andreas Dresen’s Gundermann, a biopic based on the story of Gerhard Gundermann, a struggling singer-songwriter raised in former East Germany who spent time as a coal miner and an informant for the state before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The second day of the festival will include the screening of four films, starting with Byambasuren Davaa’s Veins of the World, a drama set in Mongolia about a young boy who turns grief into a source of power after the sudden death of his father. The film was Davaa’s feature debut and also premiered at the Berlinale this year. Another debut feature, System Crasher, by Nora Fingscheidt, will also be screened. It’s about a nine-year-old girl called Benni who is described as a “system crasher” by child protection services because of her out-ofcontrol behaviour. The film looks closely at how the welfare system can fail the children they are meant to protect. It premiered at the Berlinale, where it won the Alfred Bauer and Reader Jury’s prize.
Regional film The Perfect Candidate, directed Haifaa Al Mansour, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year is also on the roster. The
Saudi-German co-production follows the story of a young female doctor who decides to run for municipal office in a patriarchal society. David Nawrath’s The Mover rounds off the day’s selection. It’s a powerful film about a former weightlifter named Walter who works as a hauler for forced evictions. He ignores the increasing pain caused by his physically demanding job just as he refuses to see the pain of the people he is surrounded by.
Highlights on the last day include filmmaker and actress Maryam Zaree’s documentary Born in Evin, which follows the quest to discover the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the world’s most notorious political
prisons. A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick, meanwhile, tells the true story of an Austrian farmer Franz Jagerstatter who refused to fight for the Nazis.
The film is inspired by the letters exchanged between Jagerstatter and his wife, Franziska, once he was imprisoned. A resistance drama, it reflects on a man’s courage in the battle against evil.
Finally, there is Udita Bhargava’s Dust, which also premiered at the Berlinale this year. An Indo-German co-production, it follows a young German man who visits rural India after the death of his Indian photojournalist girlfriend. Dust will close the event, which features a remarkable list of films.
Gulf German Film Festival runs Thursday to Saturday, November 19 to 21; www.goethe.de