In all the Sundance-y hubbub, one thing jumped out at me.
"Son of Babylon" (Iraq) - Directed and written by Mohamed Al Daradji, the tale of a young Kurdish boy and his grandmother as they travel through Iraq searching for the remains of their father/son in the wake of Saddam Hussein's fall from power. With Yasser Talib, Shazda Hussein, Bashir Al-Majid. International premiere.
Simply because I happened to copy-edit the program, I know that this film made its "world premiere" at the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi earlier this fall.
Now, I understand that premiere designations are all about semantics and contracts, and more than once I've benefited from catching unannounced sneaks at Full Frame of docs in advance of their "official" premieres at Tribeca later in April, but what distinguishes a "world" premiere from an "international" premiere? Does the latter suggest the former took place, I dunno, in international waters, like Tyson vs. Secretariat?
Folks wiser than I in the ways of festival nomenclature, do chime in and school me, won't you?
