Welcome back everyone to the third and final day of the 12th Annual Zayed University Middle East Film Festival and what an exciting line up of films we have for you!
In the words of Stanley Kubrick, “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.” The theme of this year’s event was ‘the future of film.’ Evolving forms and platforms are presenting new creative opportunities for filmmakers and with this diversification of traditional forms of filmmaking in mind we added a new category for 2022 – mobile filmmaking.
Today we will celebrate the achievements of eight impressive filmmakers whose films stood out from all the submissions received to be awarded First Place in each of the four categories of Animation, Documentary, Fiction and Mobile.
We will also be presenting a second new category – Middle East Filmmaker Award. Three awards will be given in the categories of Animation, Documentary and Fiction.
In addition to the films, today’s line up also includes an interesting program brought to you by our partner, twofour54’s Creative Lab.
We have a new segment titled, ‘A Guide to Scouting Film Locations.’ In this piece Sameer AlJaberi, Head of Locations and Government Resources, at the Abu Dhabi Film Commission, will talk about what goes into finding locations for shooting films. We thank Zayed University’s College of Communication and Media Sciences student Asma Hazem Mohammed Ahmed Alkhalifa for filming this segment.
In case you missed them last year, you can still watch the two special twofour54 programs from ZUMEFF 2021: “A Conversation with the Commissioner,” and “Meet the talents working behind the scenes.” The links are available in this year’s festival.
The ZUMEFF Steering Committee thanks all the filmmakers for allowing us to share their creative journeys and for their submissions without which there would be no festival. We also thank our partner twofour54 for their repeated support of ZUMEFF, our student emcees Fatima, Nada, Salama and Shahd for their hosting of the event, the pre-screeners, judges and of course Zayed University and Her Excellency Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of Culture and Youth and President of Zayed University for their continued support of ZUMEFF.
Most important, we thank YOU for tuning in to ZUMEFF 2022, stay safe, and see you in 2023!
Don’t forget to click on the fullscreen toggle in the Vimeo player to see the films at their best!
