Black Swan's wings clipped

Black Swan: Not coming to a theatre near you.

The office responsible for cinema censorship in Dubai has confirmed that Darren Aronofsky’s hotly tipped latest movie Black Swan will not be shown in the emirate due to its subject matter.

Movies have to pass through the Censorship Department for approval, editing or banning before they are released in theatres, and Mohammad Naser, the official responsible for cinemas at Dubai’s Censorship Department, said: “When we find that the amount of editing required takes a big part of the movie, we conclude that there is no point in releasing it.”

Naser added that Love and Other Drugs would also not be making it to cinemas: “Both these movies have been banned because of excessive sexual content,” he said, adding that in one of the two films the viewer would have been left with 25 per cent of the film had it been released after editing. He continued: “Upon reviewing a film, the censorship department makes a decision, writes it in a report and hands the report to the distributors.”

Daniela Yordanova, brand manager of 20th Century Fox for the Middle East at Empire International - Gulf, which distributes the films, said that her company had been notified that both films were banned in the UAE.

“They usually ban films because of the content and the name,” she said, citing Sex and the City as an example. “If the censoring involves just a scene then they will cut it and approve it, but if there’s a lot of censoring needed they ban the film.”

Yordanova added, however, that both films will be released in other Middle Eastern markets such as Lebanon.