“Life of Pi” to open Dubai International Film Festival 2012

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi will open the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) while Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires will be the closing film of the festival. DIFF will run from 9 – 16 December, 2012.

Egyptian actor Mahmoud Abdul Aziz and British director Michael Apted will be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Awards this year.

DIFF will host a total of 161 films across sections. Karzan Kadar’s Bekas and Haifa Al Mansour’s Wadjda; Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren; Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away and Michael Haneke’s Amour will make their Arabian premieres at the festival.

83 films will compete in the three competition sections: The Muhr Emirati, Muhr Arab and Muhr Asia-Africa awards. Another award is the IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award which offers a $100,000 cash prize to the winning filmmaker.

From India, Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely, Rajan Khosa’s Gattu, Sourav Sarangi’s Char…The No-Man’s Island, Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus, Hansal Mehta’s Shahid, Nishtha Jain’s Gulabi Gang, Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Quartet1, Kaushik Ganguly’s Sound and Joy Mathew’s Shutter will be screened at the festival. For more details on Indian films, see here.

Posted by NewsDesk on Nov 27 2012. Filed under Features & Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.