Tonight’s the night.
Everyone’s frocking up and getting out their bling.
Film Festivals are sexy aren’t they? Red carpets, celebrities, press rooms and opening night parties – it all starts tonight.
I was there last year, it was hot and sticky. Not tonight though, it’s gorgeous in Doha tonight.
Over the next few days over 50 films will be screened from 35 countries at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. They’ll be more subtitles than a hearing loss convention.
The big one, the one that’s got everyone a bit excited, is tonights premier.
Black Gold.
Filmed partly in Qatar with actors from Tunsia, Egypt. Morocco, Algeria and Lebanon, the film has a truly authentic feel – particularly if you try to forget that Antonio Banderas is Spanish. My favourite statistic from Black Gold is not the 10,000 extras or the 2000 horses. It’s the 10,000 camels. That’s a lot of camels. And a shed load of camel poo to clean up. Do you think that’s what the extras were doing?
Here it is.
Are you a Film Festival person? And if you’re in Doha and did go tonight – how was it?
Sign up for the best bits here
Sign up for the best bits from our community of forty thousands expats. Every Saturday morning we’ll shoot you the five hottest topics from the world of expat.
How very exciting! When I lived in Qatar the most exciting part of the year was the tennis! Enjoy the opportunity for some Culture and some evenings out without children!
I will. There are so many things to do over the next few days – the one I’m most excited about is Mama Africa – followed by Angelique Kidjo. Black Gold sounds fantastic – this from a friend this morning
“It was amazing!! Epic love story. Tribal warfare. Tradition vs. modernity. Conquering the brutal desert. Brotherly love. Subtle humor. And setting the stage for the lives of us Western expats in the oil rich Gulf.”
black gold meaning oil? inthat case i guess it will be the new hit across the energy husbands of millions of expat wives, kicking out syriana from the podium!
I’ve never been to a film festival, but wouldn’t mind a bit of glamor for an evening. I’ve been to festivals of other sorts in Ghana, West Africa, which were pretty exotic and colorful but involved a lot of sweating in the heat.
I hope you enjoy!
I’d forgotten about Syriana. By all accounts Black Gold was a screaming success last night.
I didn’t manage to get tickets to see Black Gold 🙁 Did get tickets to see Chinese Takeaway (AWESOME!! I scored it 5/5 and was my favourite out of the films I took in during the DTFF), Declaration of War which was moving and I loved the way it was filmed and finally Com E Con along with Conversation with Morgan Spurlock afterwards.
This is my first film festival having only been in Qatar since 28th Aug but I really enjoyed it and will be rushing down to get my tickets again next year for even more films as I didn’t rush quite quickly enough this year and missed out on seeing Mama Africa (gutted), The Lady and The Help (again gutted!!).
Well done Doha – you did yourself proud this week!