Proud moment in UAE film as Ali F Mostafa’s road movie opens ADFF

Emirati film director Ali F Mostafa, second right. with From A to B cast members; Shadi Al Fons, left, Fahad Al Butairi, second left, and Radi Rafaai, right. Mona Al Marzooqi / The National

Are we there yet? It’s best known as the mantra of children who can’t wait to get to their destination, but could be equally applied to the journey Abu Dhabi has undertaken to build its own cinema industry.

After eight years of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, the programmers decided this was the year to proclaim yes, and thus it fell to Ali F Mostafa to take the role of first Emirati director to open a festival in his homeland, or any other land for that matter. And the audience loved it, good news, as it was revealed at the premiere in Emirates Palace Thursday night the film is getting a January 1 release in cinemas across the Middle East.

From A to B, produced by Image Nation, which is owned by The National's parent company, Abu Dhabi Media, is a film with genuine laugh-out-loud moments. These were greeted with spontaneous applause by an audience that was clearly proud to see one of its own step up to the big time. (It also had a hilarious scene featuring a Manchester City shirt, doing no harm in the eyes of this lifelong fan).

Mostafa also took genuine risks, but to go into too much detail describing them would ruin the surprise - as the film really does touch on both political and cultural taboos, while largely keeping the laughs coming and staying faithful to its road movie premise.

What I particularly liked was that Mostafa has made a Middle East road movie that doesn’t simply buy into the existing genre and mildly Arabise it. The tumultuous nature of the region is laid bare, while maintaining the fundamental desire to be a comedy.

The Arab Spring, Israel, and whatever we now call the mess that is Syria are all put in front of us as our protagonists drive from Abu Dhabi to Beirut in honour of their departed best friend, and we get a wonderful opportunity to learn about the differing cultures, lives and landscapes of the Middle East.

One section in Syria sees our heroes kidnapped by militants. The actual post-kidnapped scenes are some of the funniest scenes in the film. But in order to be kidnapped, they are captured while Syrian families scour dead bodies for their missing relatives.

I commend Mostafa’s attempt to juxtapose road movie humour with an acknowledgement of the current turmoil affecting much of the Levant. It is here that he loses the tone of the film, though, as the scenes were so brutal.

The characters could easily have been captured without the preceding carnage, especially as the scenes offered little to the narrative. The actual post-kidnap section was great, and could have easily happened without a cursory, though doubtless respectfully-meant, glance at a bloodbath.

The question we began with, though, was “Are we there yet?” In short, the answer is probably yes. From A to B shows that locally-produced films are more than capable of holding their own in front of an international audience at a major film festival.

It’s a film that combines humour, politics, love and tragedy in a way that keeps the audience engaged throughout. The performances, from the lead characters to the smallest cameo, are faultless, and the responses we heard from the seats around us as the credits rolled were universally positive.