Dubai International Film Festival 2017 took place between 6-13 December. In our first report, we share our overall impressions, highlights of the festival, favourite films and discuss things that could be improved.

We are joined by Christopher Alario, a special collections librarian/archivist and cinephile who lives and works in the region and attended the festival with us.

We discuss the following films in this episode:
The Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow (dir. Fadi Baki)
The Square (dir. Ruben Östlund)
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci)
The Disaster Artist (dir. James Franco)
The Seen and Unseen (dir. Kamila Andini)
I am Not a Witch (dir. Rungano Nyoni)
You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay)
The Message (dir. Moustapha Akkad, 1977)