For the second year, the Doha Film Institute and Tribeca Enterprises have partnered to create the Doha Tribeca Film Festival bringing local and international movies to Qatar.

We initially planned to see a movie at the local shopping centre movie theatre, but fortunately due to the crowded car parks and sold-out tickets we had to revert to Doha’s new Cultural Village known as Katara. Recently completed, Katara hosts an amphitheatre, opera hall, restaurants and mosque. For the festival an open air cinema was created.

About halfway through the pre-movie entertainment of Troupe Cirque Apeiron we realised it was Family Day, a common occurrence in Qatar where only ‘families’ are allowed into certain places (which does helps with the male to female ratio). The movie was Secretariat a movie about the legendary American racehorse who won the ‘Triple Crown’.

The number of kids in the audience and the number of times the host mentioned ‘made by Disney’, I was convinced there was going to be a talking horse. Fortunately, there wasn’t and the movie was extremely enjoyable and provided an unseen insight into thoroughbred horse racing. Malkovich who played Secretariat’s trainer was also an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.

After the movie the director Randall Wallace (famous for Braveheart and Pearl Harbor) and producer were even present to answer questions.