Doha Tribeca Film Festival

The third Doha Tribeca Film Festival finally began this October after a long highly anticipated wait by people living in Doha. The festival usually goes on for about five days and showcases films and holds various events for each day. The whole purpose of bringing the Tribeca fIlm Festival to Qatar is to introduce people to the film culture by cultural diffusion. The festival brings together directors and actors from both the western and middle-eastern parts of the world, allowing the people of Qatar to learn from both sides and potentially inspires them to make their own films. The introduction of Doha Tribeca Film Festival was to encourage its citizens to start their own projects while receiving support from Doha Film Institute. The films are screened in Katara and at the city center.

This year there were many films that were based in the Middle East but a lot of them had western actors as part of the cast. There has been a lot of criticism around these films, such as Black Gold, as people believe the Middle East is not being portrayed in the correct way and that the only reason some of the films had western actors was to secure its distribution in the western and European parts of the world.

A very recent incident that occurred a few days ago at the red carpet has stirred quite some controversy. The Egyptian actor Omar Sharif was caught on camera slapping a woman while he was posing for pictures on the red carpet.

He broke social norms when he did that and now he is receiving negative sanctions for his behavior, as they are many articles being written about the incident criticizing his actions. In the actual video taken, it is unclear whether the actor actually slapped the woman or not, but he did appear quite rude when he was talking to her as he basically called her stupid when he said, “put something in your brain” in Arabic. After he finished posing for his solo pictures he calls over the woman and takes a picture with her. The woman did not look the least bit annoyed or angry as she smiles and takes the picture with him with without causing a scene. Despite the fact there have been some negative occurrences at the festival, it still remains a vital medium to transfer film culture into the Arab world.