Check out our handy guide to the latest movie releases coming out this week… 

Whether you’re planning a trip to the cinema with the kids for an animation film and some family-friendly laughs, or a catch up with friends that include a horror flick, here are our top picks of the best films out in cinemas in Dubai this week.

These are the films out in Dubai cinemas this week

Official Secrets

Based on world-shaking true events, Katharine Gun is a British intelligence specialist whose job involves routine handling of classified information. One day in 2003, in the lead up to the Iraq War, she receives a memo from the National Security Agency with a shocking directive: the United States is enlisting Britain’s help in collecting compromising information on United Nations Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting in favor of an invasion of Iraq. The result would be an illegal war, which makes Gun make the gut-wrenching decision to defy her government and leak the memo to the press to sound the alarm. So begins an explosive chain of events that will ignite an international firestorm, expose a vast political conspiracy, and put Gun and her family directly in harm’s way.

Starring: Indira Varma, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance (15+)

The Goldfinch

The movie is the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s globally acclaimed bestseller of the same name, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The movie follows the story of Theodore (Theo) Decker, who lost his mother when he was just 13-years-old. She was killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and miraculously Theo survives. Abandoned by his father and alone, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. The tragedy changes the course of his life, sending him on a stirring odyssey of grief and guilt, reinvention and redemption, and even love. Through it all, he holds on to one tangible piece of hope from that terrible day…a painting of a tiny bird chained to its perch –  The Goldfinch. This fast-paced drama will require your full undivided attention or you will miss some key details.

Starring: Finn Wolfhard, Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson
Genre: Drama (PG15)

Strange but True

Five years after the tragic death of her high-school sweetheart Ronnie during an eventful prom-night date, Melissa turns up unannounced to inform the dead boy’s family that she is miraculously pregnant with his baby. Ronnie’s mother, Charlene, still grief-stricken orders her surviving son, Philip to send her away. However, this doesn’t stop them both from investigating further. We see the plot thicken when Charlene learns that her ex-husband, Ronnie’s father, was a hospital surgeon who was on duty the night Ronnie died. She soon learns that he kept in contact with Melissa all those years in secret. One thing is clear – everyone in this movie leads double lives and has murky motives.

Starring: Nick Robinson, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear
Genre: Thriller (PG15)

The Big Trip

A goofy stork mistakenly delivers a baby panda to the wrong door. A bear, a wolf, a tiger and a rabbit set on an arduous but fun filled adventure through wilderness to Bamboo Forest to return Baby Panda (yep, that’s what they name him) back to its mom and dad.

Starring: Dan Medvedev, Steven Ochsner
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy (General)

— For the best of Dubai straight to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.