Cannes: Spreading the word about filmmaking in the UAE

Over the past few years, the UAE has enjoyed a growing presence at Cannes, with the country’s main film-related entities pooling their resources at the UAE Pavilion in the festival’s Village ­International.

Highlights in previous years included the announcement of the production of Ali F Mostafa's From A to B, which opened the Abu Dhabi Film Festival last year, and the news last year that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was filming in Abu Dhabi, just a few weeks after The National broke the news with the first photographic evidence of the shoot.

One sad absence from this year’s pavilion will be ADFF, after the unexpected announcement last week that it was being scrapped, but twofour54, Dubai Film and TV commission and the Dubai International Film Festival will all be in attendance. Details of their plans are still under wraps, but we know Diff will be screening five works-in-progress from across the Arab world as part of the Dubai Film Market Goes to Cannes section.

The winners of this year’s Reel Dubai Short Film Contest and Samsung Short Film Contest will also screen their films as part of the festival’s Short Film Corner.

Many local filmmakers will be making the trip. One of the juiciest rumours we heard was that the Image Nation Abu Dhabi-produced, Davis Guggenheim-directed documentary Malala might have its premiere at this year's festival. This now looks unlikely, but the UAE's leading movie moguls usually have a couple of surprises to pull out of the bag at the event, so stay tuned for all the latest news.