Celebrity appearances, prestigious awards and plenty of great films made this year’s Middle East International Film Festival a memorable event.

The opening night of the third annual Abu Dhabi festival welcomed Hollywood and Bollywood starlets Demi Moore, Hilary Swank and Frieda Pinto to the red carpet, while the closing ceremony at Emirates Palace on 17th October saw a raft of celebs including Naomi Watts, Eva Mendes, Orlando Bloom, Mahmoud Hemeda, Golshifteh Farahani and Sawsan Badr.

They were in Abu Dhabi to present the 2009 Black Pearl Awards to the winners of MEIFF’s competitions – the culmination of ten top days of cinema, in which 128 films were screened.
Seventeen Narrative Features, 14 Documentary Features, 25 Short Films, and 10 Student Shorts competed for this year’s Black Pearl Awards.

Winners included the Black Pearl Award for Best Narrative Film, which went to Hipsters – directed by Valery Todorovsky (Russia), winning $100,000 in prize money. The Black Pearl Award for Best Middle Eastern Narrative Film ($100,000) went to The Time That Remains, directed by Elia Suleiman (Palestine, UK, Italy, Belgium, France).

A new trophy for the Black Pearl Awards was designed for MEIFF this year, a collaboration between two leading Arabic jewellery designers, Azza Fahmy from Egypt and Azza Al-Qubaisi from the UAE.
“We wanted a trophy that could visually represent the meaning of the Black Pearl Awards,” said the Festival’s Executive Director, Peter Scarlet. “The image that did this best was a beautiful door based on traditional Arabic patterns.  We see it as a sort of portal suggesting a bright future for the award-winner, while also representing what our festival is: an open gate between cultures.”
The genuine black pearls at the centre of the trophies are generously offered by Robert Wan, the worldwide leader in supplying these pearls. Each pearl is unique and its natural colour is guaranteed.

The Black Pearl Award for Best Actor ($25,000) was won by to Hamed Behdad for his performance in No One Knows About Persian Cats, by Bahman Ghobadi and the Black Pearl Award for Best Actress ($25,000) was awarded to Alicia Laguna and Sonia Couoh, for Northless directed by Rigoberto Pérezcano.

The Black Pearl Award for Best Documentary Film ($100,000) went to TC McLuhan’s The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch for Peace (Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, USA). In the interesting Short Film competition, Black Pearls were given to The Six Dollar Fifty Man, directed by Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland of New Zealand (Best Narrative Short), Wagah by Supriyo Sen and Najaf Bilgrami (Pakistan, India, Germany) for Best Documentary, and Tripoli, Quiet by Lebanon’s Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia (Best Middle Eastern Short).
A special Black Pearl Award for Lifetime Achievement was awarded to Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave. Unable to attend due to a close friend’s ill health, the 72 year old asked her husband – actor Franco Nero – to collect the award on her behalf.

As well as the Black Pearl Awards, Emirati director Hani Al Shaibani won the two major awards at the 9th season of the Emirates Film Competition organised by Abu Dhabi Film Commission, an Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage project, which ran in parallel with MEIFF from 12th to 15th October.
Aimed at encouraging the production of short, feature, documentary, and animated films by Emirati filmmakers, the annual event also provides an opportunity for GCC nationals and non-nationals to discuss and share their work with each other as well as the chance to participate in short master classes and workshops.

Al Shaibani was given the Best Short Film Award in the UAE, winning AED 50,000 for his film Ahzan Sagheera (Young Sadness) and also picked up Best Feature Film from the Gulf Region (AED 100,000) for his Al Fundoq (The Hotel).

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