The Abu Dhabi Film Festival is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the Middle East and has consistently provided quality local as well as international cinema to the region without necessarily fussing about bringing the most high profile actors to the city. This year, their schedule is no less varied and amazing. But to make things easier for you, we’ve selected 15 films that you definitely can’t miss out when the festival arrives this Thursday.

Check out the full line-up here.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Plot - In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

Schedule & Tickets

End Of Watch

Plot - From the writer of Training Day, End of Watch is a riveting action thriller that puts audiences at the center of the chase like never before. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña star as young LA police officers who discover a secret that makes them the target of the country's most dangerous drug cartel.

Schedule & Tickets

Ruby Sparks

Plot - Calvin (Dano) is a young novelist who achieved phenomenal success early in his career but is now struggling with his writing – as well as his romantic life. Finally, he makes a breakthrough and creates a character named Ruby who inspires him. When Calvin finds Ruby (Kazan), in the flesh, sitting on his couch about a week later, he is completely flabbergasted that his words have turned into a living, breathing person.

Schedule & Tickets

Flight

Plot - In this action-packed mystery thriller, Academy Award winner Denzel Washington stars as Whip Whitaker, a seasoned airline pilot who miraculously crash-lands his plane after a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly every soul on board. After the crash, Whip is hailed as a hero, but as more is learned, more questions than answers arise as to who or what was really at fault, and what really happened on that plane?

Schedule & Tickets

Room 237

Plot - Experimental filmmaker Rodney Ascher investigates the enduring power of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining in this documentary exploring five compelling theories about the film’s meaning.

Schedule & Tickets

The Company You Keep

Plot - A gripping political thriller about the ethics of political radicalism, directed by and starring Robert Redford as a former activist in hiding for 50 years, who fears his identity will be uncovered by an ambitious journalist (Shia LaBeouf).

Schedule & Tickets

Francophrenia



Plot - Actor/co-director James Franco toys with the notion of celebrity in this intriguing chronicle of his stint on long-running American soap opera General Hospital, a deliberately oddball hybrid of documentary and video art.

Schedule & Tickets