Middle East Film Fest exec director Peter Scarlet and helmer Elia Suleiman at Variety's Middle East Filmmaker of the Year reception.
Three years after announcing its ambitions to become a film financing mecca, Abu Dhabi is showing signs that it might actually get there -- even if the oil rich emirate continues to experience growing pains.
Its Middle East film fest, held this year for the first time under exec director Peter Scarlet, was a genuine showcase for cinema from the region, not just for Abu Dhabi's labyrinthine seven star Emirates Palace hotel.
Scarlet's decision to ensure half the films selected in competition were from the Middle East was well received by filmmakers and auds, as was the decision to move many of the screenings away from Emirates Palace into a downtown mall. The result was a series of sold-out screenings and the fest's highest levels of local participation since it launched in 2007.
The fest wrapped Oct. 17 with an awards ceremony that saw over $1 million in prize money handed out. Russian helmer Valery Todorovsky took home the Black Pearl award -- which includes a $100,000 check -- for best film for "Stilyagi" ("Hipsters"), with Palestinian helmer Elia Suleiman winning the best Middle Eastern narrative film (and a similar sized purse) for "The Time That Remains."
Also under new leadership was the film financing confab the Circle, with newly appointed film commissioner David Shepheard officially launching the Abu Dhabi Film Commission. The hopes are for the commission to assist the development of local filmmakers and encourage productions to come to Abu Dhabi.
The three-day conference, where speakers included New Regency chairman Hutch Parker, Participant Media chief exec Jim Berk and WME agent Graham Taylor, saw Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Mansour winning the $100,000 Shasha screenwriting grant for her "Wajda," about the trials and tribulations of a Saudi girl.
The award to Mansour is particularly significant given that cinemas have been banned in Saudi Arabia for over three decades, not to mention the general restrictions placed on women in the conservative Kingdom, such as not being allowed to drive.
A greater irony may be that Mansour, who co-produced the first-ever Saudi feature film "Keif Al Hal?" in 2005 for Saudi maven Prince Waleed bin Talal, has had financing in place for her project for the last two years, thanks to the patronage of the billionaire prince.
Mansour will also get a first-look deal with Abu Dhabi's $1 billion production arm Imagenation as part of her prize.
As for Imagenation, the deep-pocketed shingle continued its deal-making by announcing a $10 million development pact with Walter Parkes and Laurie Macdonald as well as a $75 million joint fund with Singapore's MDA and Ashok Amritraj's Hyde Park Entertainment.
That deal, which will see the trio fund three or four cross-cultural English-language features each year over the next five years, is an extension of the $250 million joint venture announced with Amritraj last October.
For all of Imagenation's ability to ink deals with Hollywood-based entities, however, a repeated grumble heard from festgoers was the lack of apparent progress on investing in any Middle Eastern projects. That looks set to change with the appointment of former Abu Dhabi Media Company exec Weera Saad to oversee Imagenation's Arabic-language projects.
Saad has been quietly developing the company's local language slate and is set to announce the first greenlit projects by the end of the year.
"There are some phenomenal filmmakers here, people with real, raw talent," says Saad. "We want to be able to play in our own playground. Our ultimate objective is to make these projects here but these things take time."
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