Qatar Tribeca event lines up controversial fare

Controversial films are at the heart of the second edition of the the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from October 26 to 30.

Leading the programme is award-winning French-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb's action-thriller, Outside the Law, about a 1945 massacre of mostly unarmed Algerian civilians by French soldiers on the market town of Setif. It will open the festival.

When it was first shown in France at Cannes in May, riot police were deployed outside the festival hall to hold back demonstrators. And at a pre-release screening in Marseille on Monday, far-right National Front members and former French residents of colonial Algeria brandished banners denouncing "French financing for an anti-French film."

New York's Tribeca Film Festival, founded by US actor Robert De Niro to reinvigorate cultural life in Manhattan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, helped to organise the first Doha festival last year. Ten productions have also been selected to take part in the Doha festival's Arab film competition, among them four world premieres, organisers said.

"We are nurturing the new generation of film makers, supporting regional and international film financing, and supporting the new wave in Arab film making," festival director Amanda Palmer said.

Also being screened is a documentary on Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. Put together by writer-director Johnny O'Hara and American political-consultant-turned-director Duane Baughman, it has been slated for whitewashing the former Pakistani Prime Minister and her husband Asif Zardari, the current President.

A number of foreign films will also be screened, including "Miral" by Julian Schnabel about an orphan from Jerusalem, "The Conspirator" by Robert Redford about the assassination of US president Abraham Lincoln and Abbas Kiarostami's “Certified Copy”.

The five-day event will close with Justin Chadwick's “The First Grader”, the inspirational story about an elderly farmer in a Kenyan village who wants to enroll in a local school and learn to read. 
Geoffrey Gilmore, Chief Creative Officer of Tribeca Enterprises, said:  "The range, diversity and quality of this year's programme underscores our mission to showcase the full spectrum of international cinema – from the world's mos esteemed veteran directors to the emerging new class of Arab storytellers. It's challenging to limit the slate to under 50 films, so this is a very thoughtfully curated lineup." More than 300 submissions from over 50 countries were received.

Cash prizes totalling $410,000 (Dh1.5 million) are on offer in the five-day festival hosted by the gas-rich Gulf emirate of Qatar, Palmer said.
 

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