The Dublin Arabic Film Festival back in the IFI in early Oct

The fifth event of its kind in Ireland, the Dublin Arabic Film Festival 2019 will take place at the Irish Film Institute and the Chester Beatty Library from the 4 – 6th of October. Sine the Omar Sharif visited the first edition of the festival in 2014, DAFF has presented some of the finest features that the Arab world has to offer to the fair city of film, and this year with festival director Zahara Moufid at the helm and Oscar nominated movie producer Jim Sheridan again serving as Festival President, it’s looking like a promising season of Arab cinema ahead.

The IFI and Chester Beatty have a long-established relationship with the Arabic Film Festival and will play hosts again this year as six films screen over the festival’s three days, including a showing of Cartoon Saloon’s The Breadwinner.

This year, DAFF is especially proud to announce that actor Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones, Hunger, The Wind That Shakes the Barley) will be the event’s inaugural Festival Patron.

This year’s festival will include five films at the IFI including the curtain-raiser The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, Muayad Alayan’s drama centred on the clandestine affair between a Palestinian deliveryman and an Israeli cafe owner. Stephanie Brockhaus and Andreas Wolff’s documentary about the Saudi poet Hissa Hilal, The Poetess, and Soudade Kaadan’s Syrian drama The Day I Lost My Shadow will screen on the Saturday. The final two festival films, The Tower from director Mats Grorud and Nour Eddine Lakhmari’s Burnout, will hit the big screen on Sunday 6th; Burnout will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Nour Eddine Lakhmari and producer Khadija Alami. A free screening of Nora Twomey’s Oscar-nominated animation The Breadwinner will screen at Chester Beatty library at 14.00 on Saturday 5th.

Check out the full programme and schedule for the Dublin Arabic Film Festival 2019 below.

SCHEDULE

Friday, October 4th
8.20 PM The Reports on Sarah and Saleem (IFI)