The Red Sea International Film Festival (Red Sea IFF) has announced that this year’s Closing Night Gala will be Ferrari, the new biopic from maestro Michael Mann starring Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley and Patrick Dempsey. 

 

The event will also see the unveiling of the International Spectacular line-up for its third edition, which selects cinema from around the globe and features celebrated auteurs and international filmmaking icons. 

 

This section showcases some of the most highly anticipated and talked about films of the year, screened for the first time in the Arab world. 

 

The plot

Set in the summer of 1957, behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage is shattered by the loss of their son, Dino. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passions to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia. 

 

With screenplay by Troy Kennedy Martin, Ferrari has been adapted from the 1991 biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine by motorsport journalist Brock Yates, and plays in the Red Sea IFF as a Mena Premiere on December 7.  

 

Cultural exchange

Mohammed Al-Turki, CEO of the Red Sea Film Foundation, said: “It is a great honour to announce that our Closing Night Gala will be one of this year’s most anticipated films. This exhilarating film has been close to the Festival’s ‘heart’, as it has been supported by our Red Sea International Film Financing; a vehicle for us to champion acclaimed storytellers and create the opportunity for cultural exchange. Michael Mann’s powerful film shows true craftsmanship and empathy for the ambitious genius behind one of the world’s most desired works of design.”

 

Kaleem Aftab, Director of International Programming for the Red Sea International Film Festival, said: “Ferrari is Michael Mann in overdrive. It's a story about passion, love, and business where the cars are as beautiful as the film – which we loved from the moment we first saw it! This visually rich film serves as an exhilarating close to both this year’s Festival and the International Strand, for which we have gathered up the most exciting, groundbreaking and moving features from this year’s festival circuit to bring to audiences at the Red Sea in Jeddah, where these titles will celebrate their Mena premieres. We are honoured to have the work of so many iconic filmmakers, giving us new perspectives on race, belonging, identity and family.”

 

The International Spectacular brings together firsts of new cinema, with highlights that include Sofia Coppola’s critically acclaimed biopic Priscilla, Ava Duvernay’s powerful drama Origin based on non-fiction bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, screening with Yann Mounir Demange’s poetic exploration of identity Dammi with Riz Ahmed in the lead role of this short. The section also features action auteur John Woo’s Silent Night, Léa Domenach’s Bernadette (The President’s Wife), which sees Catherine Deneuve starring as iconic French first lady Bernadette Chirac, and iconic Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent film The Boy and the Heron, to screen as the Public Closing Film.--TradeArabia News Service