Tunisian designer dresses Fan in Cannes

Chinese actress Fan Bingbing arrives at Cannes - see her dress in all its glory below (AFP)
Updated 09 May 2018
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Tunisian designer dresses Fan in Cannes

DUBAI: Chinese actress Fan Bingbing channeled her inner Disney princess in a ruffled ball gown by Tunisian designer Ali Karoui at the opening ceremony of the 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival in southern France on Tuesday night.

Bingbing, a household name across South East Asia, walked the red carpet in a gown with a fitted, glittering silver bodice and tiered skirt made of aquamarine ruffled tulle. The actress accented the princess-cut ball gown with a sleek up-do and a heavy diamond necklace.

She posed for photos before the screening of Spanish-language family drama "Todos Lo Saben (Everybody Knows)," which stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. At the helm of the film is Iranian-born writer-director Asghar Farhadi, who won foreign language Oscars for "A Separation" and "The Salesman," taut character-driven realist movies that explore the divisions imposed by social class and national boundaries.

The festival, which is grappling with issues of gender equality and other winds of change this year, was declared open Tuesday by Martin Scorsese and Cate Blanchett, arm in arm, before the premiere of Farhadi's film, which is in the running for the festival’s top prize, the Palm D’Or.




Chinese actress Fan Bingbing arrives on the red carpet at Cannes (AFP)

 


‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

Updated 24 January 2026
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‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.

In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.

For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.

The film is by directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes. (Supplied)

There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.

"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.

"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."

The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.

It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.

Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."

And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.

"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."