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Director Sam Neave and his producer/star Marjan Neshat are both Iranian-born, but the films they tend to make together — including 2003′s Sundance entry Cry Funny Happy and their terrific new two shot high-wire act Almost in Love — focus on the romantic travails of upper-middle-class Westerners in ways that are as funny as they are earnest. Their newest film, despite its intentionally schematic, downright arty structural contrivance, is a surprisingly rich meditation on friendship, the difficulty of settling down and the importance of being earnest. Performed in humorous and melancholy shades by an odd assortment of performers, most notably Ms. Neshat, Gary Wilmes, Alan Cumming and Alex Karpovsky — who …...

Director Sam Neave and his producer/star Marjan Neshat are both Iranian born, but the films they tend to make together, which include the unfortunately titled 2003′s Sundance entry Cry Funny Happy and their terrific new two shot high-wire act Almost in Love, tend to focus on the romantic travails of upper-middle-class Westerners. As such, they are naturals for the American independent festival scene, where such films usually find their natural constituency, that being other upper-middle-class Westerners. Not so for Almost in Love, their daring second feature collaboration, which had its world premiere this past weekend at the 5th Abu Dhabi Film Festival, the increasingly respected festival run by former San Francisco and Tribeca topliner Peter Scarlet unspooling for nine days in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, just an hour flight from their native land.

Scarlet has brought the knack for terrific Middle Eastern programming he displayed at...