Catch up on the crème de la crème of French-language cinema at the Francofilm Festival

The Francofilm Festival returns this weekend to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, celebrating not only French cinema, but films from the wider francophone world. This year’s event, the seventh edition, features movies from France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Senegal and Switzerland.

The screenings will take place simultaneously at Vox cinemas in both cities, at Yas Mall in the capital and Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. This year, the festival runs from Thursday to Saturday, rather than spanning a full week, as was the case with previous events – organisers explain that they have decided to give audiences the chance to watch several films each day, rather than the previous one-per-day approach.

The festival opens at 9pm on Thursday with the regional premiere of Emmanuel Courcol's drama Cessez-Le-Feu (Ceasefire). It tells the story of a First World War veteran's efforts to recover from the trauma of trench warfare by travelling in Africa with an artist, while also trying to mend damaged relationships with family and friends.

Animation is the theme on Friday, with Rémi Chayé's Annecy Award-winning adventure Tout En Haut Du Monde (Long Way North) starting the day at 2pm. The film is a proto-feminist tale of adventure, in which Sacha defies her parents and sets out to track down her explorer grandfather, who has failed to return from an expedition to the North Pole.

Claude Barras's Oscar-nominated Ma Vie De Courgette (My Life as a Zuchinni) follows at 6pm. This stop-motion Swiss comedy drama was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, losing out to Disney's Zootopia, and was also the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but failed to make the final shortlist. It won two Cesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, and also earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Saturday's closing-day triple bill returns to live-action features. First up, at 2pm, is Moussa Sène Absa's 2002 Senegalese social drama L'Extraordinaire destin De Madame Brouette (Madame Brouette).

Savina Dellicour's Belgian coming-of-age drama Tous Les Chats Sont Gris (All Cats are Grey) follows at 4pm, before Pol Cruchten and Frank Hoffmann's Luxembourgeois film noir, Les Brigands (The Robbers), brings this year's festival to a close at 7pm.

Francofilm is a joint production of the Institut Français des Emirats Arabes Unis, Alliance Française Dubai and Abu Dhabi and the Dubai International Film Festival.

• Tickets for each screening cost Dh25. Pre-booking is possible, but not essential, at www.voxcinemas.com

cnewbould@thenational.ae

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”