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Leonardo DiCaprio played the eccentric, homophobic billionaire Howard Hughes with admirable zest in the Golden Globe winner The Aviator.   The Martin Scorsese's biopic starts with Hughes' early filmmaking years as owner of RKO studios, but mostly focuses on his role in designing and promoting new aircraft.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, The Phantom of the Opera, and Ray.

Nominee, Best Actress, Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy (I, Tonya)Hailing from the farmlands of Dalby, Australia, Margot Robbie has charmed audiences everywhere with her beauty, talent, and dedication to female empowerment. While initially in roles such as Laura Cameron in ABC’s Pan Am (2012) and Naomi Lapaglia in Scorsese's Golden Globe winner The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), which heavily relied on her beauty, she has come to show that she is more than just a pretty face, tackling more complex and intense roles like the dangerously sexy Harley Quinn in DC’s Suicide Squad (2016) and the disgraced and misunderstood star athlete Tonya Harding in I, Tonya (2017).

The westernization of this commercial middle-eastern hotbed hits you at first sight. It's as if the masterminds behind the extremely rapid growth of the city-state of Dubai not only decide to create it ex-nihilo but also prescribed exactly how they wanted it to be: A place where every possible dream of luxury and good life can come true.

“My Husband’s Wife (Tokal), is the story of two women who find out that they have the same husband. Produced, written, directed and starring the lovely Gauikhar (Gia) Noortas (as Bota), the movie is the much-talked-about drama in Kazakshtan and Kyrgyzstan as it handles the taboo topics of infidelity, immorality and the abuse of power of wealthy, powerful men.

A highly political drama that shows the implications of celebrity culture and the influence of fame on sensitive topics like religion, is the premise of The Preacher, an Egyptian film by director Magdi Ahmed Ali. Sheikh Hatem (Amr Saad) is a high-profile television celebrity and talk-show host in a society influenced by fundamentalist views.

Lipstick Under My Burkha is an Indian black comedy film that tells the story of four small town Indian women, ages 18 to 55, who are asserting their personal and sexual rights. Written and directed by Alankrita Shrivastava and produced by Prakash Jha, the controversial film almost did not make it on the big screen in India when it was initially denied a release in January 2017 after the country’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) refused a certificate stating that “There are contagious (sic) sexual scenes, abusive words, audio pornography and a big sensitive touch about one particular section of society.

The Wedding Plan is an Israeli romantic comedy in which Michal (Noa Koler) is a young-ish woman who's been trying to get hitched for years. All her clocks are ticking like with many of Jane Austen heroines or, more recently, Bridget Jones.

Layla M. , a Dutch entry in the 2018 Golden Globe race for Best Foreign-Language Film, is a hard-hitting drama about Islamic extremism.

Every year, the Dubai International Film Festival takes a couple of films from Arabic countries that were screened successfully in December, and sponsors them to participate in the Golden Globes, organizing an evening of cinema from that region that is becoming a tradition in the HFPA calendar. One of the films selected for that special night this year was Tramontane, the feature debut of Vatche Boulghourjian which won the Muhr Award for Best Actress for Julia Kassar, an important accolade in Arab cinema.