Day 3 at Dubai International Film Festival 2016

Only Men Go To The Grave

Here's our Tea with Culture podcast report from day 3 of the film festival. Wael Hattar and I discuss Foreign Body, Gaza Surf Club, Apprentice, The Preacher.

Additionally, Faisal Saleh from Where the Script At? podcast, aka @cinestrong on Twitter, joins me to to discuss La La Land and Only Men Go To The Grave. 

A special mention about Only Men Go To The Grave, a UAE/Iran production directed by Abdulla Al Kaabi (his first full feature film). The film synopsis from the DIFF website: 

After the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988, a blind mother welcomes her estranged daughters to tell them a secret. Unfortunately, she accidentally dies while sharing it. During the funeral, the daughters try to deal with their mother’s sudden death and also work together to unveil her secret by looking for clues from visitors. Throughout the funeral, their own lives continue to unravel, giving room for buried family tensions to gradually surface, while struggling to deal with their own secrets and deep-rooted guilt. The daughters start to question everything about their mother’s life after a peculiar encounter…

It also came with this disclaimer on the website, "

Contains: Adult References and Gay Theme". In a way, it felt like a spoiler, so I was already going in with some ideas about what this film is really about. I commend Al Kaabi for making a film addressing topics that are deemed taboo in this region. It is not a perfect film, but one that needs to be watched, and I do hope it gets a release in the UAE cinemas in 2017. I am still trying to formulate my thoughts about this film and hopefully will get a chance to interview the director and write about the film. For now, please do l

isten to thoughts about this film shared by Faisal and myself in this episode.