Suicide bomb film opens Dubai film festival

By Andrew Hammond

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hollywood and Arab stars converged on the
Gulf Arab city of Dubai on Sunday for a festival of world film
that opened with a movie about why Palestinians carry out
suicide bombings.

The cast of “Paradise Now” were feted at the opening
ceremony along with U.S. box-office pulls such as Morgan
Freeman and Matrix star Laurence Fishburne, Arab stars Adel
Imam and Leila Elwi and French-Algerian rai singer Faudel.

Now in its second year, the Dubai International Film
Festival has set itself the ambitious goal of being a “cultural
bridge” between the West and the Arab world.

“It’s an extremely important subject for us in the Middle
East,” said Egyptian comedy actor Hany Ramzy. “Our role in Arab
cinema is to do films that give the West an idea of what we are
all about.”

“Paradise Now,” which has been well-received in the United
States and Israel, suggests the random violence of suicide
bombings arises from Israeli occupation and not from just
Islamic fundamentalism.

Ali Suliman, who plays one of two youths who become suicide
bombers, said he hoped the film would change attitudes in the
United States, Israel’s key ally, who the Arab world accuses of
being biased against the Palestinians.

“That’s what we hope for and that’s what’s happening,”
Suliman said.

The festival allows new filmmakers to try out movies on
ethnically mixed audiences in this cosmopolitan city, which
often presents itself as a Manhattan of the Middle East.

Fishburne, who trod the red carpet with one arm in a sling,
seemed taken with the city’s mix of desert, tropics and modern
architecture in the religiously conservative Gulf region.

“I wouldn’t miss being here for the world,” he told
reporters.

Controversial film “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim
World,” directed by U.S. comedian Albert Brooks, gets its world
premiere at the festival on Thursday.

The film pokes fun at American ignorance of the Muslim
world, but its eye-catching title caused Sony to pass up the
chance to distribute it, Brooks has said, fearing reprisals
from Muslims in the West or the Islamic world.

Brooks plays a comedian sent by the U.S. State Department
to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh, so
everyone can get along better in the post-9/11 world.

The film is set for U.S. release in January by Warner
Independent, the art-house unit of Warner Brothers.

Art-house and challenging cinema are rarely seen in Dubai,
where Hollywood crowd-pleasers do a roaring trade among the
city’s 1.5 million population of Europeans, Africans and
Asians.