The Abu Dhabi Film Festival is looking for movies, and directors and producers have until July 15 to submit their work.
This year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival might not be taking place until October 24, but the organisers are already on the hunt for brilliant movies and local talent to showcase at the awards.
Directors and producers have until the middle of July to send in their work and to enter award categories such as Narrative Competition, Documentary Competition, Emirates Film Competition and environmental category Our World. In 2012, the Film Festival received over 3,500 submissions from 75 countries and many of the winners have gone on to bigger and better things. The rules for talent wanting to enter are simple: films submitted to the festival should have had their first public screening after November 1, 2012 and should not have any public screening in the Middle East before the screening at the festival.
A screening at ADFF can lead to big things for a movie. Lebanese flick A World Not Ours and Egyptian film Coming Forth By Day are two Arab film that have gone on to receive accolades around the world after being premiered at ADFF, as did Dreams In Their Eyes, a short documentary made by three Emirati female movie-makers. And then there’s Murk Light, a winner last year which was selected for the Tribeca film festival in New York last April.
That doesn’t mean the festival’s organisers are just sitting back and waiting for entries, though. ‘There are two ways to get films. You call for entries, plus you also want to reach out to films you might not be aware off,’ says Teresa Cavina, programming director of the festival, who has been working for the event for five years. ‘But the main work for me and the programming team is to gather information on the films we’re aware of. We are actively chasing films on that side. But of course, we want film makers to submit their work themselves.’
Teresa claims they are still in the early part of this year’s process. ‘We watch all the films we select – we don’t select films without watching them,’ she says. ‘We’ve selected a few already but can’t reveal which ones yet. We’ll start to have an idea which films we’ll be showing around August.’
Teresa’s hunt doesn’t begin in Abu Dhabi, but in Europe. ‘It starts at the Berlin International Film Festival,’ she says. ‘The first stage is to go to Berlin and meet the main film companies. The film companies are the main reference points; from them we find out what films will be ready. Then we can start dreaming about what will be ready for our festival. But at the moment the picture remains very big.’
Teresa’s next job is working out a schedule for the festival. ‘We need to work out what is possible for the festival and what we think will be good for the programme.’
The ADFF has already had around 70 Arab films submitted for this year’s festival, according to Teresa, including some through SANAD, the development and post-production fund of the festival. ‘We normally watch around 150 Arab films,’ she adds.
Choosing the finalists for the festival then comes down to a very basic formula, she says: ‘You either believe in a film or you don’t. A film is either good or bad. There’s not much difference, good or bad, in the standard of the entries compared to last year. The general balance is the same. The programmers watch quite a few films we don’t feature because they’re not good enough. The programmers and I watch around 1,300 films, both narrative and documentary, for the whole festival.’
Local movies are one of the most important parts of the process, she suggests. ‘The UAE and the Gulf area is a very important part of the festival and nurturing local talent is also an important part of the festival.’
Although the ADFF would love unknown movie-makers to submit work, Teresa says it’s happening less and less.
‘It’s always great when you find a film you were not aware of, but it happens less because our tools for researching films are getting sharper and sharper,’ she adds. ‘We’re aware of the best films in circulation but impromptu entries do happen.’
This year’s festival runs from October 24-November 2 and will again take place at Emirates Palace and Marina Mall. ‘The venues are decided, we were happy with them in the past. We have a good relationship with Marina Mall,’ says Teresa.
The final challenge facing the festival when choosing the entries is making sure they are audience-friendly. ‘We have to prove that festival films are not boring. I’ve been told that if you put that a film is to be shown at the festival on a poster, people won’t go and see it because they think festival films are boring,’ laughs Teresa. ‘Our audience was a bit suspicious at first about watching films at a festival, but cinema is a form of art, it’s not meant to bore them.’
Information regarding eligibility is available at www.adff.ae/submit
