Indian actress Frieda Pinto will be part of the jury at the 9th Dubai International Film Festival, starting on December 9.
 
Pinto, who shot to fame with her very first movie, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, will be working with renowned jurors like Michael Apted, Kerry Fox, Bruno Barreto, Chang Dong Lee, Fatemeh Motamed-Arya and Nayla Al Khaja.
 
Pinto will judge short films as part of a panel, headed by the Screen movie critic, Mark Adams.
 
Boyle spelt luck for Pinto. Slumdog Millionaire won several Oscars, including those for Best Picture and Best Direction that helped the Mangalorean actress garner attention.

 She bagged several movies, including Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (premiered at Cannes), Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna (On Thomas Hardy’s Tess) and Julian Schnabel’s political biography, Miral.
 
Surprisingly, except for Miral, where Pinto gave a memorable performance as a Palestinian teenager caught in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, she has not been impressive in her other roles.
 
But, where is Dev Patel, who co-starred with Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire and was supposedly her boyfriend? He appears to have been a one-movie wonder.
 
The Festival, where 80 films will vie for over $ 575,000 in prize money across three categories -- Muhr Emirati, Muhr Arab and Muhr Asia Africa -- will run till December 16.
 
(Gautaman Bhaskaran will cover the Dubai International Film Festival)