Compiled by Anealla Safdar, Digital Department, DFI

The wait is almost over.

In just over a week, “The Dark Knight Rises” will be playing in the region – some 30 days after its almost-international release.

Warner Bros Middle East spokespeople have been inundated with tweets about “The Dark Knight Rises”

For reasons which are still unclear, the Middle East has had to wait an extra excruciating month until Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film plays.

A few weeks ago we spotted an emerging trend. To escape the torture of not-knowing, some were travelling to countries close by to watch the film.

Patricia Donohue (Doha Film Institute’s Programming Operations Coordinator), recently returned from New Delhi, India – the spot she chose to take a Bat-cation.

In her words…

“I finally saw the Dark Knight Rises!
I hopped on a plane to New Delhi just to see Batman because I didn’t want to wait for it to be released in Doha. Maybe that sounds crazy (crazy awesome) but I have to say…

“The Dark Knight Rises” poster obscures a poster for Bollywood film “Cocktail” in the New Delhi cinema

Totally. Worth. It.
I went with friends, airmiled my way to Business Class and got myself booked into a fancy hotel…

Because I roll like Bruce Wayne.
I know traveling to a different country to see a fictional character fight crime in tights and a cape is pretty ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is what I had to do to get there…

First there was the (Bat)visa.
I’m embarrassed to say, application forms terrify me. My friends helped…the whole process took about a day.

Then there was the total and irrational panic about getting sick…
I had never been to India. My dad kept teasing me about Delhi-belly, my friends kept telling me about their horror stories and I was getting lists of things to avoid eating.

We tried to see the movie three times before we succeeded…
The first time our tuk-tuk driver got us lost and took us in the opposite direction. My friend yelled at him in Hindi; I tried videotaping it with no success because the streets weren’t properly lit. It was a ‘dark night’! The second time we made it to the theatre but the newspaper lied to us about show-times; it wasn’t playing. The third time we had tickets two hours before the show but almost missed it because on our way back to the theatre we got stuck in people and car traffic.

Patricia with her “The Dark Knight Rises” movie tickets.

But we did make it, with two minutes to spare…
I was actually going to be able to watch the movie I spent a small fortune to see.

I had heard that people talk in movies in India…
I’m not a fan of that at all but I was willing to suck it up and tune it out. My friend kept kicking the seats in front to silence people. Strangely, it was also subtitled in English (even though it was already in English) but that was much less distracting than the constant conversations going on around me. What I wasn’t expecting though…

They put an INTERMISSION in Batman…
Ninety minutes into the movie. In the middle of a scene. In the middle of a shot. As someone was walking. At a point in the movie that was building up to something big. The picture froze and the lights went up. What made it worse were the commercials about jewellery (holy cheap diamonds Batman!).

When the movie resumed I literally had no idea what was going on.

I got over it. I got to watch the excellent conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s trilogy.
Even with the talking and the lost momentum, it was excellent.

But that’s all I’m going to say about it.
Now that I’m back in Doha I can’t talk about it because no one else has seen it. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to hear anything until after 16 August. I’m left to Facebook-stalk my friends back home, harassing them and begging them for nerd talk.

My last few days in Delhi were amazing.
I got to experience a new culture, see the city, shop, took slightly bigger risks with food (rice with soy sauce instead of granola bars) and relaxed because my journey was finally complete.

The only problem is, now I have another wait to see The Dark Knight Rises again.”