This week starts with an exhibition built around private thoughts, diary drawings and small works you have to get close to see — and gets progressively more active from there. Cinema Akil is halfway through its Francophone film festival; there is a new Mirdif studio rethinking the usual train-harder mentality; and Bluewaters has a 19-seat teppanyaki counter serving some very serious Japanese wagyu. Then wake up painfully early for a 12K on Saturday and finish the week with Hermès turning leftover leather, silk and even old saddle trees into completely new objects.

Where? Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue

Private World brings together Lulua Alyahya, Rami Farook, Sohrab Hura and Khaled Jarada; the group show is made up largely of intimate, modestly scaled works that reward getting close.

And the “private” part is quite literal in places. Jarada presents 23 ink drawings from a personal notebook; Hura’s gouaches capture fathers and sons, wounds, sunsets, and other fleeting observations; while Farook’s works turn internal thoughts, belief, and emotional states into drawings and paintings. Across the show, the artists approach solitude and memory from very different directions, but everything feels deliberately removed from the noise outside. Ocula

It runs until October 24.

Where? Cinema Akil, Alserkal Avenue

Ten films, six countries and a very broad definition of what Francophone cinema can look like. Franco Film Festival is back at Cinema Akil until October 9, moving between romance, crime, animation, social drama and films fresh from the festival circuit.

If you are going on Wednesday, there are three to choose from: Diane Kurys’ Moi Qui T’aimais, about French cinema icons Yves Montand and Simone Signoret; Cannes opener Leave One Day, Amélie Bonnin’s musical drama about returning home; and the Dardenne brothers’ Young Mothers, following five young women living in a maternal support home. All films screen with English subtitles.

The festival runs through October 9.

Where? The Commons, Mirdif

If you missed the opening last month, there is a new reason to head to Mirdif. KORE Theory is part Pilates studio, part performance space and part private recovery club — built around the idea that harder does not automatically mean better.

Its classes are based on three things: Resistance, Tempo and Control, applied across heated and non-heated Mat Pilates and Microformer sessions. In practice, that means more attention to alignment, pace and what your body is doing as it gets tired, rather than simply chasing reps.

Then there is KORE Reset, with three private contrast-therapy rooms pairing Finnish saunas with cold plunges and showers. The whole place, designed by Australian studio Studio Plenty, looks closer to a boutique hotel than a gym, and The Lazy Guy is currently in residence with a month-long coffee, matcha and protein-shake pop-up.

Where? Bluewaters Island

There is a new Japanese restaurant on Bluewaters, and the main event is just 19 seats.

Taiga, which opened on October 1, comes from the team behind TakaHisa and centres on an omakase-style teppanyaki counter led by chefs Takashi Namekata and Hisao Ueda. But forget the flying spatulas version of teppanyaki: the emphasis here is on precise cooking, temperature and ingredients, with everything prepared directly in front of you.

Those ingredients are not exactly modest either. The restaurant serves A5 BMS12 wagyu, including Kobe, Matsusaka and Ozaki beef, alongside seasonal seafood flown in from Tokyo’s Toyosu Market. If sitting around the grill isn't your thing, there are tables and private rooms serving shabu-shabu, sukiyaki and yakiniku too.

Where? Selectshop FRAME, Dubai Design District

Set the alarm. FRAME Run Club and FLT Run Club are continuing their October long-run block with 12 kilometres around d3 — but there is a small catch at the end.

The first 9K are easy, at around RPE 4/10, before the final 3K pick up to a steady RPE 6/10. So, conversational first, slightly less conversational later. FRAME runs its Saturday sessions in pace groups, so you don't need to be the fastest person in Dubai to join.

Meet at 5:45 am at Selectshop FRAME; the run starts at 6 am.

Where? Hermès, Dubai Mall

What does Hermès do with a saddle tree from the 1960s that is no longer going into a saddle? Apparently, it might become a guitar, chair, basket, vase or even a sledge.

That is basically the logic behind petit h, Hermès’ experimental workshop that begins not with a design brief but with materials left unused by the house’s other métiers. Leather, silk, porcelain, crystal, terracotta and old hardware are handed to artists and craftspeople, who work backwards from whatever they find and give it another life.

For its return to Dubai, Creative Director Godefroy de Virieu has designed an installation around a huge carpet woven from palm leaves. Supported by metal structures, it rises and folds through the second floor of the Hermès Dubai Mall store, weaving between the objects on display — a nice meeting point between a material deeply associated with the region and petit h’s slightly strange approach to reinvention.