World-renowned classic Citizen Kane to get its first public screening in the UAE next Sunday

1 March 2016 – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: CITIZEN KANE,  repeatedly named the Best Film of All Time by film critics and filmmakers around the world, will receive what is believed to be its first public showing in the UAE on Sunday March 6 at 7:30 PM at the Manarat Al-Saadiyat auditorium in Abu Dhabi. The free screening of the film is a new 4K restoration from original nitrate elements. It is part of The 7th Art, the ongoing programme presented by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. Peter Scarlet, the veteran film expert who has curated the series, will introduce the film, one of the most influential movies ever made and lead an audience discussion afterward.

Directed by Orson Welles, only 26 at the time, CITIZEN KANE can be seen as a portrait of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day,  but, as Scarlet notes, its portrait of someone rising from humble beginnings to enormous wealth, only to crash on the rocks of his own overweening ambition and narcissism finds many echoes in the present time. "This film is a must-see for everyone," Scarlet notes, "and the chance to see a beautiful new restoration of this exciting movie on a big screen is not to be missed."

CITIZEN KANE's use of innovative techniques in the way it tells its story, its photography and its pioneering use of  sound have affected filmmakers everywhere in the world, and for decades it headed the poll conducted every 10 years by the British film journal Sight & Sound. (The film that displaced it in the most recent edition of the poll, Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO, will be screened by The Seventh Art on April 3.)

CITIZEN KANE, USA, 1941, directed and produced by Orson Welles, screenplay by Welles and Herman Mankiewicz, photography by Gregg Toland, starring Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane.