ARAB CULTURAL FESTIVAL

Asia Premiere

2014 Dubai International Film Festival
2014 Abu-dabi International Film Festival Opening Film

Omar finds himself still racked with guilt over the death of his best friend Hady, who passed away five years ago. Now, just days away from the birth of his first child, he decides to take the road trip they never got to take...much to the dismay of his very pregnant wife. Omar reaches out to his estranged high school friends Jay and Ramy who have lost touch since Hady's death to take the road trip in his memory. Jay, now a playboy/wannabe DJ, and Ramy, an #activist (with 737 twitter followers!), take some convincing, but finally agree to the trip. The boys decide to drive from Abu Dhabi - via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to arrive in Beirut. Their journey is filled with with peed bump - breakdowns, wrong turns, shady mechanics and a camel or two. If all of this doesn't drive them crazy, it might just bring them closer.

Korea Premiere

2014 London International Film Festival
2015 Singapore International Film Festival

Maha has always been passionate about film, and as a set designer she's become an expert at creating imaginary worlds. Under immense pressure at work, she sights another life on the horizon and begins slipping between realities - one resembling the film set she's designed and the other her supposed real life. As she grows ever more entangled in each, the border between the real and imagined becomes blurred. Maha walks a fine line between her parallel lives, and must decide for the first time what she truly desires.

Asia Premiere

2014 Dubai International Film Festival
2014 Vision du Reel Documentary Festival

The director returns to her native Lebanon due to the financial difficulties of her father, the principal of a progressive school in a south district of Beirut. The family home forms the venue for frequent lively and often humorous discussions. From these debates emerges the recent history of the country and the way political change has irreversibly transformed society.

Asia Premiere

2014 Dubai International Film Festival Best Feature Film

Ten-year-old Nojoom is a curious girl, who loves to play with dolls. But she is forced by her father to marry a 30-year-old man. It's one less mouth to feed, and the dowry her family receives in return can feed her family. Nojoom's marriage with a man who does not care about her age makes her even more exhausted. She has to work under scorching sun without a break, draw water from the well, and wait on her husband who is 20 years older than her or enduring his beating during the night. At last, Nojoom decides to stand up against the people and prove her existence in a reasonable and lawful manner. Based on the true story of Nujood Ali, this film is also the story of the director herself, who was forced into marriage and divorced at the age of 11.

Korea Premiere

2013 Abu-dabi International Film Festival Best Feature Film

1991 Gulf War: Ibrahim, an Iraqi soldier has escaped from Kuwait as the army retreats. He now faces the dangerous journey home with only one path: across the southern desert, the no-man's-land between Saddam's Regime and the American intervention. With no place to hide, he is soon captured by the Republican Guard and cast into Saddam's infamous prisons, suspected of being a traitor. But as Ibrahim's fate seems written, the Iraqi people are uprising beyond the prison walls, instilling hope in those held captive, that the freedom they long for beckons. 2013: In search of answers about the past, the Director of the film confronts three survivors of the uprising. Through the past and the present, fiction and reality, he revisits a fateful climax in the killing fields of Babylon. Will the uprising end the heinous crimes of Saddam Hussein and finally set them all free?

Korea Premiere

2014 Dubai International Film Festival Jury Prize

Yousef (an 80-year-old refugee from Wadi Salib) has lived in a shack in the last natural valley 'Roshmia' with his wife Amna in the city of Haifa, occupied in the Nakba of 1948. The city's municipality does not acknowledge the shack or its inhabitants; no water, Electricity or phone line are extended to last residents of the valley that was inhabited by many until early 80s. Life remains quiet in Roshmia valley until the Musinipality of Haifa plans to build a road across the valley to connect the Mediterranean Sea to Mount Karmel, which will result in confiscation and demolition of the old couple's shack, forcing them to find another home. Aouni, the man who looks after the couple, acts as a middlemen between them and the municipality and attempts to secure compensation, however the negotiations lead to tension among the three characters.

Asia Premiere

2014 Abu-dabi International Film Festival New Horizons' Best Director

During the first euphoric years following the independence of Algeria, two close friends, Djaffar and Hamid, face a promising future. Over the decades, however, secrets and betrayal drive them apart. The second feature from Algerian director Lyes Salem.

Asia Premiere

2014 Toronto International Film Festival
2014 Dubai International Film Festival

A young orphan, Aicha, is found alone in the forests of central Morocco. She has a personal history that reveals a courageous attempt at self-determination. Taken and sold from her home in the hills of the Atlas mountains, Aicha finds herself at the mercy of a petty criminal. Abbas, and his conflicted girlfriend, Nadia. They soon cross paths with Zacaria, a Moroccan/Iraqi writer, who has left everything behind - including a passionate relationship with a teacher, Judith - to search for his missing brother. The group embarks on a journey that will lead them across Morocco, to Istanbul, the plains of Kurdistan and beyond.

Korea Premiere

2014 Venice International Film Festival Venice Horizons Award Best Director
2014 Toronto International Film Festival

Theeb tells the story of one boy's journey to adulthood after the death of his father. When Theeb finds his Bedouin tribal life is interrupted with the arrival of a British Army Officer on a mysterious mission, Theeb's older brother Hussein agrees to escort him on a treacherous journey across the Arabian Desert. An ambush occurs and Theeb, although just a young boy, comes to quickly understand that if he is to survive he must live up to the attributes of the wolf of which he was named and learn about adulthood, trust and betrayal.

2014 Cannes International Film Festival Ecumenical Jury Award
2014 BUSAN International Film Festival

2015 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya, and Issan, their twelve-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes when Kidane accidentally kills Amadou, the fisherman who slaughtered "GPS," his beloved cow. He now has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants.