ABU DHABI // Film and musical talent from around the world walked down the red carpet last night with a double screening at the Abu Dhabi Film festival.
The surrealistic drama Chicken with Plums and the political noir The Ides of March were shown to packed audiences at the Abu Dhabi Theatre.
Some of the celebrities attending the 6.30pm Chicken with Plums screening included the lead actress Maria de Medeiros and the film's co-director, the Oscar-nominated Iranian Marjane Satrapi.
Satrapi said she had experienced no pressure in following up her successful animated debut, Persepolis.
"I don't care about these things," she said. "You do one thing and then you move on to something else."
Set in Tehran in 1958, Chicken with Plums follows Nasser Ali Khan, a famous violinist who spirals into depression after the breakdown of his marriage and his instrument.
Bedridden, Khan begins to recall his life and missed opportunities.
"The film has some moments of fairy tale and some parts comedy," Satrapi said. "Some people may have a hard time to know what kind of film it is but it's basically a melodrama."
As with Persepolis, Satrapi's new film is an adaption of her graphic novel, but she vowed this would be the final film adaption of her work.
"I just thought it would be a nice story that could be great for cinema, and since it was already written I thought, 'Let's just make it to a movie'," she said.
"But I don't want to make works of adaptions all my life, so this will be the last one."
For the Portuguese actress de Medeiros, the chance to work with Satrapi and her co-director Vincent Paronnaud convinced her to sign up to play Khan's neurotic wife Faranguisse.
"They are really the big magicians of the film," she said.
"They did this wonderful thing where they created this really sad story that one can watch with a big smile from the beginning to the end."
Also appearing at the film'sscreening were the French electronic music duo Air, who will be delivering a free master class on film composition at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr Hotel today.
The young Algerian filmmaker Safinez Bousbia, whose music documentary El Gusto is set to make its Middle East premiere today at Marina Mall's Vox Cinemas, was there as well.
The festival also flexed its star-power muscles with the 9.30pm screening of the George Clooney-directed The Ides of March.
Attending the Middle East premier was the film's star Evan Rachel Wood, and the Bollywood superstar Saif Ali Khan.
Woods said while The Ides of March, the story of a naive governor (Clooney) on his first presidential campaign, is set in the cut-throat world of US politics, it is not simply a "political film".
"It's about human nature and moral dilemmas," she said. "It's not one-sided and everyone takes knocks in it so everyone can relate to it on some level."
Sporting a bandage above his left eye sustained from an injury on set, Khan said he was enjoying his first appearance at the film festival.
"I have been here a number of times but not as part of the film festival," he said.
"Most film people have a lot in common, so I am happy to be in a part of the world where I have never attended a film festival and just to be part of it."