DUBAI: The Dubai International Film Festival kicked off Wednesday evening with a politically-charged message.

In his opening remarks, festival chairman Abdulhamid Juma gave an impassioned speech, which, while carefully avoiding mentioning the Daesh by name, took aim at the ongoing violence reverberating across the Middle East and highlighted cinema’s role in affecting positive change.

“Tonight we inaugurate the festival amid grey clouds, at a difficult time where glowing fires, contradictory views and foggy thoughts are all over the world,” he said, adding that the 134 films in the festival’s lineup represented “creative and bold” attempts to explain what was happening in the world.

“They (the extremists) want us to resort to a dark jail where they can practice their torture rituals, as demonstrated in Majed Al-Ansari’s film Zinzana. They want to hijack our religion, our security. They want women to be an item they can buy and sell, with no rights, while woman in fact continue to fight for a better life, as portrayed in the movie Suffragette by Sarah Gavron. They want to take us back to the age of slavery, which we got rid of 1,400 years ago, as in the movie Bilal by Ayman Jamal and Khuram Alavi. They want to corner us, isolate us from the outside world, as you will see in tonight’s screening Room by Lenny Abrahamson.”

The curtain-raiser Room played to a packed crowd at the Madinat Arena, the festival’s long-serving hub, where its young star Jacob Tremblay was in attendance just hours after being nominated for a SAG award for best supporting actor.

“It’s a very exciting time for me because this is a very fun place,” the nine-year-old said on stage. “Lots of people here are nice and it’s super warm.”

Catherine Deneuve was also welcomed to the stage to collect the event’s lifetime achievement award, while other names on the red carpet included Dev Patel, Richard Dreyfuss, Michael B. Jordan and Egyptian comic Bassem Youssef.