It’s hard to believe yet another year of the film festival was upon us. With all of the busyness going on, I wasn’t even sure about attending any films as I can barely stay awake past 8pm during the weekdays. In past years, I’ve gone from attending around 10 films over the week-long festival to choosing one particular venue to choosing a few that are at reasonable times to attend. π
So, this year, I looked for ones on days that I would more than likely go and narrowed to three that looked worthwhile. The first one we had to skip because of another event that came up. However, we managed to get to the other two.
First up was “Approved for Adoption” by Jung and Laurent Boileau. Here’s a trailer:
We stayed afterwards to hear Jung speak and it was so wonderful to have a KAD represent our viewpoints and our stories. It was interesting that he wanted to focus more on the issue of identity than of the adoption experience itself. Perhaps it is the safer one to tackle as it starts to get too deep and personal otherwise. It was interesting to hear people speak of adoption openly – one man said he was second-guessing his desire to adopt in the future after seeing the film; another woman said that her daughter was adopted and that she was glad that the film showed a balanced view of the experience. For others it was just a sharing of a powerful story in a creative way. I spoke with Jung afterwards briefly and was not surprised to hear that he was close with Deann Borshay Liem, whose documentaries I own and are wonderful. She is working on another documentary called “Geographies of Kinship“, which I have sponsored. In any case, it was really great to see this film and to have it at a film festival!
Next up was “The House I Live In” by Eugene Jarecki. Here’s the trailer:
It was a very well-done film showing the struggles of the War on Drugs and what it has really done to the US society. I’ll not go further into a commentary, but it was a thought-provoking film.
There were two other films that were shown in the film festival that we actually downloaded and watched at home.
1. Arbitrage – directed by Eugene Jarecki’s brother, Nicholas Jarecki (what a creative family!); starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon.
I may have fallen asleep through some of this…but overall it was pretty good.
2. The Expatriate – directed by Philipp Stolz.
Also entertaining enough, but am glad that we didn’t pay to see these in the theatre as the TV was good enough. π
Thus ends the fun of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for 2012!
π
T
