Emirates Airline Festival of Literature announces 2025 lineup

The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature revealed its 2025 author lineup on Tuesday. (Supplied)
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Updated 13 November 2024
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Emirates Airline Festival of Literature announces 2025 lineup

DUBAI: The Emirates Literature Foundation has revealed the speaker lineup and programme details for the upcoming Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2025, officially marking the countdown to the 17th edition of the event. Set to take place from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3, 2025 at the newly renovated InterContinental Dubai Festival City, the LitFest will offer attendees over 150 incomparable experiences, including fan-favourites: Desert Stanzas, LitFest After Hours, Discovery Talks, and the LitFest Families programme.

Leading the list of authors is US-Indian writer and Stanford University professor Abraham Verghese, author of “The Covenant of Water,” which rose to fame when it was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s book club.

Other anticipated names include Emmy Award-winning journalist Hala Gorani, the best-selling author and illustrator of the wildly popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series Jeff Kinney, multi-talented author and screenwriter Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket, creator of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”), Booker Prize-nominated author Chigozie Obioma, best-selling travel writer and author Dr Mohamed Mansi Qandil, scholar and researcher Abdel Illah Benarafa, Cultural Personality of the Year Waciny Laredj, poet and author Khalid Albudoor, and celebrated Palestinian chef and cookbook author Fadi Kattan.

Closer to home, Saudi author Faisal J. Abbas will talk about his new book, “Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile,” a witty and thoughtful take on what it is like being an Arab in London.

“As we navigate a world of uncertainty and change, the Emirates LitFest serves as a vital platform for dialogue, understanding, and reflection,” said Ahlam Bolooki, CEO of Emirates Literature Foundation, Director of Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, and Managing Director of ELF Publishing.

“Global conversations around identity and culture have never been more crucial, and we are honoured to welcome literary icons from across the globe whose works speak to the heart of these issues. Through our Festival’s dynamic programme, sessions that are set to inspire future generations and events that celebrate our shared experiences, we are building a community based on empathy and understanding. Now, more than ever, we need stories that connect us to our shared humanity, and the Emirates LitFest is where those stories happen” she added.

Dubai Culture is sponsoring this year’s Emirati Strand, which celebrates the culture of the UAE and provides an opportunity for Emirati and international authors to grace the Emirates LitFest stage together. The Emirati Strand features a diverse range of experiences and a distinguished line-up of Emirati writers including poet Adel Khozam, Dr Noura Alkarbi, artist Asmaa Al-Remithi, poet Ali Al-Shaali, author and scholar Salha Ghabish, author and trainer Hamdan Bin Shfayan Alameri, author Nadia Al Najjar, filmmaker Nahla Al Fahad, and many more.

“With everything going on in the world, now more than ever, we need stories. We need human connection. We need to come together in the ‘sanctuary of dreams’ … which the festival offers,” Tamreez Inam, head of programming, told Arab News.

“The festival welcomes people who want to dream and imagine a world that celebrates our shared humanity and offers a place where people can tell their own stories, find themselves in other stories and connect at that very human level. And I think that’s why the 2025 festival is so important; it’s needed more than ever now,” she added.

Dania Droubi, the festival’s chief operating officer, revealed that the event will also host an international youth program.

“We have 150 university students from around the world coming to participate in our program, and they are going to be here in Dubai,” she said.

“They’re all students who speak Arabic and who study Arabic. They are going to be here to meet with another 150 from the UAE-based universities, and they’re here to attend and see the authors and the speakers … and just participate in these discussions, because the youth are the future.”

For information on the full programme and tickets, visit https://emirateslitfest.com.


Priyanka Chopra Jonas eyeing Bollywood return in 2025, crossover star says at RSIFF

Updated 19 sec ago
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Priyanka Chopra Jonas eyeing Bollywood return in 2025, crossover star says at RSIFF

  • Misses dancing and culture, she says at Red Sea film festival
  • Feels ‘fortunate’ to work in 2 of world’s largest film industries

JEDDAH: Bollywood fans can rest easy — Indian superstar and film producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas is not yet done with India’s film industry and is planning to return as soon as 2025.

“I’ve been seeking to do something again. It’s been almost six, seven years since I’ve done a movie back in India. I’m hoping next year … I’m very close,” Chopra Jonas told Arab News.

She was speaking on the sidelines of the fourth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, where she was honored at the closing ceremony on Thursday.

“I like a couple of things very much. I’m really hoping next year I do an Indian movie, because I miss the dancing,” she said.

“I miss the language, I miss Indian culture. I miss working with the crew that I’ve grown up working with in the Indian film industry,” continued Chopra Jonas, who is married to American musician Nick Jonas.

“So I really never transitioned from Bollywood to Hollywood. The idea was always to balance both. I think I’m very fortunate to be one of the very few talents that can work in two of the largest film industries in the world. And I am very proud of that.”

Chopra Jonas is coming off a packed 2024 schedule where she completed filming on two massive projects, including Amazon Prime Video’s “Citadel” season two and the Hollywood swashbuckler action film “The Bluff,” co-starring Karl Urban.

The series “Citadel,” produced by “Avenger: Endgame” filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo, and also starring “Game of Thrones” actor Richard Madden, introduced two new international spin-off series this year, with two more in the works.

While “Citadel: Diana” is set in Italy, “Citadel: Hunny Bunny,” starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Varun Dhawan, follows the lives of Chopra Jonas’ character Nadia Sinh’s parents.

“I think it’s the only show of its kind in the world to try to achieve that, which is having other original shows from local languages that are all connected. I don’t think that’s ever been achieved in entertainment.

“And it’s a really ambitious idea, and only, I guess, Amazon Prime Video could pull it off. I’ve worked with them a lot this year, and as a studio they just have really ambitious ideas, and I’ve had a great time working this year with them,” said Chopra Jonas.

She added: “The second season was really fun to film because we’ve now connected stories from our international shows as well. In the second season, we have a lot of new cast that’s come in.

“Joe Russo directed most of it himself, which was really cool, because he’s just incredibly talented when it comes to shooting something at that scale, but yet not losing the integrity of your characters. So that was really wonderful.

“I think this season is very grounded. It’s very about the characters and what is happening with each one of our stories, which I think people will find really, really interesting.”

Chopra Jonas also stars in the upcoming pirate flick “The Bluff,” from British indie filmmaker Frank E. Flowers. Apart from Chopra Jonas and Urban, the film also stars “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” actor Ismael Cruz Cordova.

“I mean, to play a female pirate is an incredible opportunity, and especially because female pirates actually existed. So, it was really wonderful for me to start doing research into the 1800s and 1700s and, you know, read about amazing, legendary female pirates like Grace O’Malley.

“And it was just really amazing to think that in the 1700s you have like women that were captains of pirate ships and did what we usually see men do,” she said.

“And then when I read the script, it’s a really grounded movie. So, it’s not like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ where, you know, it’s like fun, but it’s like the serious version of what piracy actually was like, and pillaging.

“And so it’s a wonderful story about a woman trying to save her family from her past. I love that story. We shot it in Australia over three months. The story is based in the Cayman Islands, so we recreated that. And, yeah, I finished shooting that in August, and then I went into ‘Citadel’ season two.”

Chopra Jonas shot to fame in Bollywood in the early noughties and starred in several blockbusters including “Don 2” and the “Krrish” franchise before catching the eye of Hollywood casting directors, most notably with 2017’s “Baywatch” and 2021’s “The Matrix Resurrections.”


Still to screen: Movies you can catch this weekend at RSIFF

Updated 12 December 2024
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Still to screen: Movies you can catch this weekend at RSIFF

  • With just two days to go, here are a handful of the films coming up at the festival

‘Holes’ 

Director: Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan 

Starring: Mariam Abdulrahman, Meshal Almutairi 

Saudi writer-director Aldhabaan’s latest feature has echoes of his last, “The Matchmaker,” in that “Holes” is also a psychological thriller. It centers on Rakan and his wife Rim, desperate to find their own place so that they no longer have to live with Rakan’s mother. The only issue with their new home is the hole that someone appears to have hammered through one of its walls. After moving in, Rakan becomes increasingly distant from his wife. Through flashbacks, we begin to learn why his mood has changed, and when his mother is attacked by burglars breaking into her house, Rakan is confronted by an unwelcome reminder of his past.  

‘Better Man’ 

Director: Michael Gracey 

Starring: Robbie Williams, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman 

It’s the story of UK pop superstar Robbie Williams, but “Better Man” is not your average musical biopic. While the rest of the cast consists of actors (including some of England’s finest), Williams is played by a CGI chimpanzee (voiced by the man himself), because of Williams’ feeling of being a “performing monkey” for most of his career. The result is actually genuinely moving as we follow Williams’ meteoric rise as a member of boy band Take That through his record-breaking solo career to his struggles with fame, addiction and depression — arguably far more moving because of the choice to not have Williams, or, indeed, any other actor, play the lead. An astonishing technical achievement. 

‘Lail Nahar’ 

Director: Abdulaziz Almuzaini  

Starring: Abdullah Al-Sadhan, Zyad Alamri, Nawaf Alsulaiman 

Saudi writer-director Almuzaini is best known as the co-creator of the wildly popular animated series “Masameer.” With “Lail Nahar” he turns his satirical lens on the Saudi entertainment industry. Popular singer Nahar is accused of racism in a video that goes viral. To counter the accusations, he announces — live — his upcoming marriage to a black woman. There’s just one snag: he doesn’t yet have a fiancée. However, he comes to an arrangement with a wedding singer, and the pair find that their fake romance unexpectedly blossoms into an emotional journey.   

‘My Driver and I’ 

Director: Ahd Kamel 

Starring: Roula Dakheelallah, Mishaal Tamer, Mustafa Shehata 

Saudi actress, writer, director and producer Kamel mines her own childhood in this coming-of-age story set in Jeddah in the Eighties and Nineties. It centers on the relationship between a rebellious girl, Salma, and her family’s chauffeur, a Sudanese man named Gamar, who quickly becomes her confidant and something of a father figure in lieu of her real dad, an always-on-the-go businessman. But as Salma grows up, their relationship becomes strained as Gamar tries to rein in her defiance, believing that he is protecting her reputation.  

‘Night of the Zoopocalypse’ 

Directors: Ricardo Curtis, Rodrigo Perez-Castro 

Voice cast: Gabbi Kosmidis, David Harbour, Scott Thompson 

Animated comedy-horror inspired by a short story by English horror writer Clive Barker. A meteorite crashes into Colepepper Zoo, releasing a virus that turns the majority of the animals there into zombies. The handful of survivors, led by a young wolf named Gracie and the gruff old mountain lion Dan, team up to find a cure and defeat the mutant Bunny King. Family-friendly fun.  

‘Yalla Parkour’ 

Director: Areeb Zuaiter 

Starring: Areeb Zuaiter, Ahmad Matar 

Palestine-born filmmaker Zuaiter’s debut feature documentary picked up the International Prize at DOC NYC. It was reportedly 10 years in the making and was completed before the events of Oct. 7, 2023 (although the ongoing destruction of Gaza is noted in the prologue). The film was inspired by internet footage the Washington-based Zuaiter discovered in 2013 of a group of young men performing parkour in Khan Yunis, in south Gaza. At the time, Zuaiter was searching for connection to her homeland, having lost her Palestinian mother. Via social media, she gets in touch with one of the athletes, Ahmad Matar, and they begin to talk about life in Gaza — where Zuaiter is unable to visit. But with Matar as her guide, she begins to rediscover childhood memories, and to see parkour as a form of hope and freedom in the face of oppression.  

‘A Sudden Case of Christmas’ 

Director: Peter Chelsom 

Starring: Danny DeVito, Andie MacDowell, Wilmer Valderrama 

This seasonal film is a family affair on several levels, not least because comedy legend Danny DeVito stars alongside his daughter Lucy. It’s the story of an American couple on the verge of separating. To break the news to their 10-year-old daughter Claire, they take a trip to her grandfather’s hotel in Italy. Hoping that she can hatch a plan to keep her parents together, Claire asks the whole family to celebrate a final Christmas together. In August.   


REVIEW: Keira Knightley fronts wonderfully over-the-top spy drama ‘Black Doves’

Updated 12 December 2024
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REVIEW: Keira Knightley fronts wonderfully over-the-top spy drama ‘Black Doves’

  • Knightley and Ben Whishaw dazzle in new Netflix show

LONDON: It’s not uncommon to see Keira Knightley on TV around the festive period — usually in reruns of “Love Actually” or the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. But “Black Doves” – a new six-part Netflix series from writer/creator Joe Barton – sees Knightley in an altogether different Christmas setting.  

On the streets of festive London, Knightley’s Helen is swept up in a world of snipers and espionage after the death of a civil servant forces her everyday life as a devoted wife and mother to overlap with her secret career as a Black Dove — a spy who has been passing secrets from her politician husband to a shadowy organization run by spymaster Reed (Sarah Lancashire, devouring every single scene she’s in). With Helen now a target, her friend and master assassin Sam (Ben Whishaw) sweeps in to help her get to the bottom of the threat. 

What follows is a fast-paced caper that’s equal parts whodunnit, violent gangster flick and British character drama. Knightley’s Helen is all polished calm with simmering rage, Whishaw’s Sam is an amiable, charming man with a terrifying aptitude for violence. Together, the two form one of the most dynamic on-screen partnerships of recent years. Each part of their history — some hinted at, some told via flashbacks — feels captivatingly real and relatable, despite the fact that both have more spy skills than Bond and Bourne combined. 

At times, it’s super-tropey — characters write important names and events on notepads, or whispered flashbacks are used to remind us that what’s happening is Very Important Because of That Thing That Guy Said Last Episode. But where such heavy-handedness is usually an irritation, “Black Doves” leans into its pulpy tendencies, and is actually all the better for it. Because it’s that combination of highly implausible spy thriller and decidedly British sensibilities that makes this show fizz. It’s great to see Helen battle a knife-wielding assassin in her kitchen, or to see Sam decimate attackers in his pajamas (it remains, though, very disconcerting to hear the voice of Paddington Bear discussing a shootout), but it’s also great to hear them bicker about their personal lives in between set pieces.  

“Black Doves” is a wonderful, festive surprise — a show that’s as good as the sum of its impressive parts, and then some. 


Review: First-time director Anderson .Paak brings humor and magic to RSIFF title ‘K-Pops’

Updated 12 December 2024
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Review: First-time director Anderson .Paak brings humor and magic to RSIFF title ‘K-Pops’

JEDDAH: Cinema can go overboard with emotional relationships, and this is where American singer and rapper Anderson .Paak’s Red Sea International Film Festival title “K-Pops” hits the right notes without sinking into a morose medley. Entertaining, with music that keeps the audience engaged, the film follows BJ, a washed-up drummer whose life turns around when he meets his teenage son for the first time.

.Paak himself plays the father, who is still holding out in middle age for rock’n’roll stardom while his real-life son Soul Rasheed plays the fictional Tae Young, whose mother Yeji is Korean.

The film was partially shot in Saudi Arabia's AlUla. (Supplied)

BJ gets an unexpected gig on a Korean talent show and discovers that Tae Young is a hotly-tipped contestant.

The movie travels beyond the Korean cultural scene by exploring the love life of its protagonist, who on a trip to Korea meets his old lover, Yeji (Jee Young Han), and learns that he has had a son by her. The two make up for lost time, and the scenes between them are handled subtly by .Paak – laudable for a debutant director who is also a multi-Grammy winner.  Eager to make up for lost parenting time, BJ becomes the boy’s mentor but as the film goes on, we realize the father needs to grow up alongside his son.

Partly shot in Saudi Arabia’s AlUla as part of a multi-film deal between Film AlUla and global media company Stampede Ventures, the work turns out to be endearingly personal and the ties between father and son are magical. Touchingly tender, it is an easy watch, in part because of the strong chemistry between all three lead stars. What is more, interracial complexities are woven into the plot, although I did feel that these could have been explored a little more — a somewhat understated screenplay could have been reason and more layered storytelling would have been welcome. However, the film's comedic touches make up for this and .Paak is mesmeric, especially when he gets the audience to laugh the loudest. Leisurely executed, the movie flows along like a lazy river that is a joy to ride.


Review: RSIFF title ‘Black Dog’ is an art house draw

Updated 12 December 2024
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Review: RSIFF title ‘Black Dog’ is an art house draw

JEDDAH: The winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Chinese drama “Black Dog” travelled to the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah and screened as part of the Festival Favorites program. Stark and suitably set in the barren landscape of the Chinese desert, the movie explores loneliness and exudes a sense of desperation. Director Guan Hu (known for “Mr Six,” “Run for Love,” “Cow”) follows a murder convict who leaves prison and lands a job as a dog catcher in a work that strongly reminded me of the celebrated Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano.

Lang (essayed by a grim Eddie Peng) is hired to trap strays in the Gobi Desert. But a man with a heart that melts, he watches in anguish as the canines are mistreated and decides to adopt one. Once a celebrity — a stunt motorcyclist, a great guitarist and the son of a bigwig — Lang’s incarceration sees him transformed into a completely different person that is wonderfully encapsulated by Peng.

Strictly for art house fans, “Black Dog” can be a hard watch for others and the starkness of a part of the country with its decay and hostile desert sands is far from the allure that we often associate with cinema. Hu does not seem to care as he tells us with brutal frankness how dozens of dogs (some suffering from fatal rabies) are hunted down with a huge net by catchers — the scenes can be revolting to some.

“Black Dog” relies on one too many contrived incidents that impede the narrative flow, but if you’re a fan of moody, almost allegorical films, this one is for you.