The Damascus international film festival is more than 30 years old, and has been growing at a steady clip: for long a bi-annual event, it’s turned into an yearly jamboree only last year. The programme is a sprawling, bewildering mix, with more than 200 films distributed over 11 days. Hollywood is well represented (the package includes a section on Oscar winners, as well as more recent films ). There’s a sizeable number of films from Egypt, with whom Syria has long had close creative links, as well as from Switzerland, a fresh entrant which has a whole section to itself. There are tributes to Greta Garbo, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Zhang Yimou. There’s also a small section on Syrian cinema; the only section tinier is from India!

So what’s the criterion for selection, I ask Rafat Charkas, the festival’s ever busy general secretary, who’s never in one place for more than a minute. The whole point of the festival, he says, is for the people of Damascus to get acquainted with world cinema, and given the numbers thronging the box office windows at the four festival venues, one can see that there are enough audiences, eager to sample films from around the world. The focus is not on being spanking new, but on providing variety. The Indian segment, which is confined to Bollywood, is a puzzle. Akbar Khan’s two-year-old opus, ‘Taj Mahal’, which didn’t find takers in India, is a centrepiece, with the director there to present his film. ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ and ‘Taare Zameen Par’ are the only relatively new films; the rest of the list is a seriously mixed bag of ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, ‘Dharam Veer’, ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’, ‘Asoka’, ‘Bride and Prejudice’, Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam’, ‘Murder’, and the embarrassingly bad ‘Rog’. The films seem to be here due to a mix of personal enterprise, (Akbar Khan is here on personal invitation, Ashutosh Gowarikar was reached by the Indian embassy in Damascus) and sheer availability.

I also discover that Bollywood is simply not as omnipresent here as it is in other parts of the Middle East. It arrives scantily and late in local theatres. There’s a TV channel dedicated to Indian films, but that’s only watched by those who stay at home, and the old, I’m told disparagingly. No one that I talk to has heard of Amitabh Bachchan. And, gasp, Shah Rukh Khan is an unknown entity. The Khan who’s made waves at the Damascus festival is Akbar, whose ‘Taj Mahal’ has shown to a rapturous response. Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I know the very beautiful Indian actress Booja. Err, Booja? They mean Pooja Batra, the leggy lass who plays the calculating Queen Noorjehan, and who is at hand to help promote the film. The ‘very beautiful Booja’ is a smash hit among festival-goers, and our group of adoring Damascene volunteers.

Like all international film festivals, the 16th edition in Damascus is a bustling global bazaar. And it’s determined to fast-track its trajectory, says Charkas : we’ll be bigger and better next year. They’d better, because they have competition right in the neighbourhood. In the past five years, the Dubai festival has grown huge, and the past two have seen Abu Dhabi lean to on the horizon ( the latter is flush with cash : a billion dollar movie making fund was announced last month, after the second festival got over ; a film school is also coming up). But Dubai is too Bollywood, and Abu Dhabi is still too new. If Damascus carries on the way it seems to be going, it looks all set to be the destination festival for the region, which is at the cusp of cultures and civilisations — a wonderful confluence of East and West.

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