Dubai Unveils AsiaAfrica Competition Titles

LONDON -- Ashim Ahluwalia's debut Miss Lovely, selected for both the Festival de Cannes and Toronto Film Festival, will unspool during the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) as part of the event's AsiaAfrica program.

our editor recommends

Miss Lovely: Cannes Review

Valley of Saints: Sundance Film Review

Ahluwalia's film, which follows two brothers working in the grubby, low-rent, semi-criminal fringes of the Bombay film business, will be among the titles competing for the event's Muhr AsiaAfrica Awards.

Also selected for this year's Toronto Film Festival, Ship Of Theseus from filmmaker, playwright and artist Anand Gandhi will be in the mix.

The film explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death through the stories of an experimental photographer, an ailing monk and a young stockbroker.

The sidebar has also programmed Sundance Film Festival winner

independent filmmaker and writer Musa Syeed with his environmental drama feature debut Valley of Saints.

The sidebar and competition will also play host to Bangladeshi film director, screenwriter and producer Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s latest feature Television, a feature from Sri Lankan filmmaker Asoka Handagama entitled Him and a brace of documentaries, Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang and Sourav Sarangi's Char…The No-Man’s Island.

DIFF director of Asia Africa programs Nashen Moodley said: "The lineup will give audiences of all ages and ethnicities a chance to discover new South Asian voices and celebrate established ones. The selection is guaranteed to entertain, inform and possibly leave audiences a little shocked!"