Next month's Beirut International Film Festival will have among its 61 screen offerings from around the world two works by directors from Saudi Arabia. The seven-day event which opens on Oct. 6 will see showings of the film “Ayish” by Abdullah Aal Ayyaf, and “Al-Gandarji” by Ahd Kamel, the female Saudi director residing in the US. Aal Ayyaf took the prize for Best Short Film at last April's Gulf Cinema Festival in Dubai, while Kamel was awarded second prize at the same event in the Best Short Narrative Film category. According to one festival organizer, a range of movies is scheduled, from short narrative works to documentaries. “The festival will open at the UNESCO Palace Theater with the film ‘Somewhere' by the American Sofia Coppola, which won the Golden Lion Prize at the recent Venice Film Festival, and it will close with the 2009 Italian film ‘I am Love' by Luca Guadagnino,” she said.
