Captain Abu Raed shines on the Midwest

First of all, God bless Michael Moore. Like Robert Redford with Sundance, Michael Moore and his team have created what has grow to become the biggest film festival in the Midwest, that is the Traverse City Film Festival, with over 90,000 attendees in its fourth year. And this week Abu Raed won both the Jury and the Audience awards for Best Feature Film, competing against both American and international films. The response of our audience of over 1000 people blew my mind. This was the 35th and 36th time that I see the film with an audience since our premier in Dubai. And it felt like I was seeing it for the first time. At the end of both screenings we received "thunderous" applause (as one article described it) and a very moving standing ovation. Imagine going up to the stage after your film and you look into the lights and you see everyone stand up clapping. It's both moving and inspiring to me.

But what's most important is that now I realize that we have a movie that is bigger than I ever thought. Based on the reactions we saw at Traverse City, where the viewers are not from the movie business, but from your everyday world, I am convinced that even though times are extremely tough for foreign films in the market now, we have a sleeper hit that will continue to grow and grow and grow thanks to word of mouth.

Thank you everyone who came to see Abu Raed, and to all those spreading the word about the little movie that could.